Proposal: Rename the "Press" board to "Spammer of the Month" board

[o_e_l_e_o]

I would also point out that threads in the press board is a function of news articles about bitcoin. I might ask which news articles you would like to see discussed in the press board? In the past few weeks, I have created threads (actually thread, singular) about an article I found in a reputable news organization.

Anything that is newsworthy enough to appear in a mainstream/large/reputable news sources, and not simply in a crypto-only site. Thinking of recent developments, things such as Taproot and the US house passing the infrastructure bill and its related crypto provisions would definitely qualify as newsworthy and notable enough to be discussed. Looking at some of the recently created threads in the Press board by our spammer of the month, things such as the opinion of one person that Ethereum is better than Bitcoin, or the opinion of one legislature that bitcoin should be a payment option, are not newsworthy in the slightest.

Really since bcash split from bitcoin, there has been very little drama, or contention about the future of bitcoin.

As I discussed somewhere earlier in this thread, I think that is part of the issue here. The number of actually newsworthy things happening to bitcoin or involving bitcoin is far smaller than the number of things you can scrape off the bottom of the barrel and churn out some completely trash click bait article about. Unless we clamp down on the spam, it will always outnumber and drown out the good/newsworthy topics.


On a side note, good to see our Spammer of the Month^TM is branching out in to one liners as well now! Gotta farm those sweet, sweet shitcoin payments!

@bbc.reporter I absolutely agree with you. If the things written in the last paragraph are put into practice, it can be a solution to many issues. Let's follow the developments.

I agree with you on this. Some countries outside of Africa treat bitcoin as the enemy. In fact, if they were aware of the importance of the technology it contains, they would benefit their country a lot.

In recent days, we see that there is a bitcoin with a bearish trend. Do you think this decline will continue or do you expect a new high? Meanwhile, some altcoins stood strong in the face of this decline.

Since we aren't going to moderate it, can we just close this board already?

[1715454861]

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[DaveF]

And IMO this is also causing some people not to post there.
They take a look at something and think that it might be worth posting in press and then take a look at what is actually in the press board and not bother.

I used to post more in other sections and read more sections and have over time have really cut back where I go here due to spam / junk.
Some boards are just such a disaster it's not worth digging through the piles to get to something good. I don't think I am the only one in this situation.

-Dave

[RickDeckard]

Come on admins.

I PMed theymos the day I opened this thread, explaining in more detail the issues with the Press board and linking to this thread. I have had no response, which I can only assume means he is content with the current situation. Given that, and that we have also had no response in this thread or any of the many previous threads about the Press board, there is probably no point in us continuing to push to try to clean the board up.

I remain confused why we are happy to let spammers run bitcointalk in to the ground and push away good users and good discussion in the name of free speech. I will continue to always defend free speech, but there is a very obvious difference between protecting controversial thoughts and ideas and allowing utter spam to ruin the forum.

I think that the silence of theymos doesn't necessarily means that he isn't working/thinking on making changes on the Press board. I think that it can be interpreted from two, very different, point of views:

• A - He took note of the concerns of numerous members and he's currently discussing what to do with other staff members. Perhaps he's analyzing the history of the board and evaluating our claims with them;
• B - Free speech is free speech and (we) can't do nothing that goes against it.

If indeed the path being follow is route A then I think that a simple message like - "We are listening to your concerns and are evaluating the current state of the board" - would be enough to at least have some sort of feedback regarding our concerns. If this was just a claim from a random user it would be understandable to be "ignored" but we are talking about numerous members and, at the same time, these members are passionate and dedicated to our forum, so I don't see anything wrong in at least balancing out the problems that we've highlighted with the sub and at least give us feedback in what the staff thinks about them. Because we could be totally wrong - I doubt it - and if that's the case then I would very much like to know why, even that would lead to counter argument from our part.

If the path chosen was B then I still would like to get a reason why. I get free speech and I think it's one of the pillars of modern society, but doesn't the board content goes directly against the "Forum Moderation policy"[1]? Should we respect one rule in favor or ruining others? Where's the balance in that equation being made?

The policy to not remove anything worked when the forum was small. Now that we have thousands of posts a day, we can't afford 50% of them being junk. The moderators are now instructed to be less tolerant of low-value posts.

Some guidelines:

1. Free speech - you can say anything as long as it is relevant and presented in a calm and polite manner. Swearing, SHOUTING etc. make your post more likely to be removed.
2. No zero value posts or threads, like "SELL SELL SELL"
3. No pointless or uninteresting threads.
4. No referral code spam
5. No NSFW content

What I think that is also in the table is the fact that if a decision is made regarding the board, it would set a precedent to do the same to other boards (Discussions like "If you did to Board X this set of things, why don't you do the same to Board Y?). But I don't think this is necessarily bad since a review from time to the regarding the forum activity is actually beneficial to it (from my point of view of course). It is specially true when our forum has the vast dimension that it currently owns. I do believe that any kind of review that any board is subjected to, has to have a consensus - similar to how BTC network operates - regarding its current state and this "review" period - where staff gathers feedback and evaluates the board status - should be long enough in order to implement grounded and justified actions.

Otherwise this just discredits that specific board leading to more active users completely ignore it because they know almost nothing good comes out of it. Does it really make sense to have it a board just for the pure sake of having it?

[suchmoon]

I think that the silence of theymos doesn't necessarily means

I think he's a big boy and can easily post or PM a couple of sentences himself instead of leaving everyone guessing and speculating.

Until that happens, Occam's razor says that no one cares. Mods don't care to clean it up, admins don't care to make any changes (hire/replace mods, restructure boards, etc) to make it easier to clean it up, and users don't care to report posts because it's a pointless waste of time.

This isn't the first time this has been brought up or the only board with issues. The whole idea of Bitcoin Discussion being one of the shittiest boards on the Bitcoin forum should be a matter of grave concern for... someone, but apparently it isn't.

[actmyname]

This isn't the first time this has been brought up or the only board with issues. The whole idea of Bitcoin Discussion being one of the shittiest boards on the Bitcoin forum should be a matter of grave concern for... someone, but apparently it isn't.

When I think of Bitcointalk, for some reason, altcoins are at the forefront of the traffic and activity. I wonder: have we already crossed the point to where the noise-to-signal ratio overflowed into the negatives, and now we think everything is peachy?

The forum will continue on, but what is the actual purpose of using it anymore, if not to spam, scam, or continue in circlejerk topics about nothing?

As of this post, the list of rules has been viewed 736769 times, with a member count of 3398535. Bear in mind, those are not unique views. For some reason, the forum is most unfriendly to new users despite having removed the Newbie jail system years ago.

As a guest, you can't view trust, and thus all marketplace threads (where trust is viewable and relevant) should ideally be blocked off to such users or have a giant warning that gives them prerequisite knowledge. Flags are the only preventative measure for this subset of users, and of those only the yellow ones could be applied without the existence of a victim.

Once you sign up, you receive the great privilege of seeing DefaultTrust metrics but if you never learned about rules, trust, or anything that should have been taught immediately after registration, then once your seven-day grace period is up, you no longer see those yellow flags. I wonder if there should be some "remove type-1 flag" button that requires user confirmation, to indicate their experience and knowledge of the system, rather than an arbitrary time-based metric?

Thankfully, we have an intuitive forum where all users are responsible for their stupidity when they can't find the rules or when they play at websites that everyone (but them) knows is a scam or become frustrated, spam, and banned when they finally do learn about the convoluted mess that is Bitcointalk.

[o_e_l_e_o]

He took note of the concerns of numerous members and he's currently discussing what to do with other staff members.

The issues with the Press board have been going on for years and have been discussed for years. See this thread from Foxpup 6 years ago: New Board Suggestion: "Actual Press". See also all these threads discussing the mess that is the Press board:

December 2020 - @Best_Change spams in the Press section
June 2020 - Moderation of @CoinIdolNews constantly shitting in the Press board
August 2019 - New guidelines are needed for the Press board
June 2019 - Press Board - Limit Number Threads Per User Per Day.
July 2018 - News spamming in the press subforum
February 2018 - Let's retire the Bitcoin Discussion > Press sub-forum
November 2017 - The Press Board - Moderation Required
February 2016 - Bunch of idiots/bots spamming the hell out of press board

6 years we have had complaints for this board of legalized plagiarism in which >90% of topics are simply advertising spam for crypto "news" sites. If after 6 years of complaints there is not even a response, then the only logical conclusion is either satisfaction with the current situation or complete apathy towards that board. Either way, it doesn't seem worth our time to continue to push to clean it up.

Free speech is free speech and (we) can't do nothing that goes against it.

As I've said above and as I've shown many times on this forum, I will always argue in defense of free speech, even when that speech is particularly stupid or repulsive. But there is a very obvious difference between protecting controversial speech and ideas, and allowing someone to stand up in the middle of a debate with a megaphone and repeatedly shout "VISIT MY WEBSITE", drowning out all sensible discussion and resulting in the majority of people present getting up and leaving, which is effectively what these spammers are doing.

[BlackHatCoiner]

It's both encouraging and disappointing that six years now, there's protest about this board and still, no action has been taken.

6 years we have had complaints for this board of legalized plagiarism in which >90% of topics are simply advertising spam for crypto "news" sites. If after 6 years of complaints there is not even a response, then the only logical conclusion is either satisfaction with the current situation or complete apathy towards that board.

Besides theymos and Cyrus who else belongs to the administrating team? Who are those who should come into agreement to make the change? I've noticed hilariousetc did talk about this and was against on having it which makes me think the moderators don't have much opinion on how will the forum operate besides approving/disapproving the reports.

[RickDeckard]

The issues with the Press board have been going on for years and have been discussed for years. See this thread from Foxpup 6 years ago: New Board Suggestion: "Actual Press". See also all these threads discussing the mess that is the Press board:

December 2020 - @Best_Change spams in the Press section
June 2020 - Moderation of @CoinIdolNews constantly shitting in the Press board
August 2019 - New guidelines are needed for the Press board
June 2019 - Press Board - Limit Number Threads Per User Per Day.
July 2018 - News spamming in the press subforum
February 2018 - Let's retire the Bitcoin Discussion > Press sub-forum
November 2017 - The Press Board - Moderation Required
February 2016 - Bunch of idiots/bots spamming the hell out of press board

6 years we have had complaints for this board of legalized plagiarism in which >90% of topics are simply advertising spam for crypto "news" sites. If after 6 years of complaints there is not even a response, then the only logical conclusion is either satisfaction with the current situation or complete apathy towards that board. Either way, it doesn't seem worth our time to continue to push to clean it up.

Thank you so much for that o_e_l_e_o. While I registered in 2018, it was only during this year that I started being more active. I wasn't aware of the history of reports similar to the same one that we are discussing now and honestly I'm baffled to the - apparently - lack of feedback from the administrators. What leaves me even more baffled is that, after reading all those threads posted by o_e_l_e_o, at least some moderators seem to be on the opinion that the Press board needs something to be done to it. Here's one of the most interesting quotes from hilariousandco:

I brought the issue of this up in the staff board back in late 2017:

If theymos isn't going to archive this section then I think we should prohibit any articles from crypto related sites and blogs etc. The sub forum is meant for notable press hits anyway, but now it's just any old crap that vaguely mentions crypto by sig spammers that some shitty site posts. Coindesk and CryptoCoinNews etc are not noteable press hits. Any threads that are not from mainstream media should just be trashed (or the sub board is just locked). There are also some Press boards in the local subs which are easily abused by sig spammers and farmers using bots. Thoughts?

Most of us agreed that it should be locked via the poll I did:

Question:    What should we do with the Press boards?

Lock/archive the entire board    - 9 (75%)
Trash any non notable threads    - 3 (25%)
Nothing. Carry on as is    - 0 (0%)
   
Total Voters: 12

At the very least we should stipulate what counts as a notable Press hit as otherwise people will continue to post anything in there. I still think the board has served it's purpose though.

There are two interesting facts regarding this pool:

• Staff clearly reckon that there's something wrong with it - 75 % is a strong indicator
• No one agrees that the board should be left as is - 0 % of the votes

And yet, almost one year after nothing was done to follow up this poll. I reckon that the poll was just made to have a generous knowledge of how each staff member felt regarding the board, but I'm finding it really hard to believe that they went with all that discussion to have it let rest for a whole year - after all they all agreed that it was something to be looked into. I wonder if we could have an insight on the follow up from this meeting/poll? I reckon that most of us are open to counter arguments, that's just how discussions happen and it's totally fine to have them. I think that its worse when we don't ear anything back, it kinda makes us feel that we aren't being listened, while we're just expressing our thoughts regarding this current scenario.

Here are more replies from hilariousandco - from different threads linked by o_e_l_e_o - that, from my reading, happen to be aligned with most points being discussed here (quotes presented in a descending order):

Multiple suggestions have been proposed in the past including just locking/archiving it completely or only allowing posts from non-crypto related sites to stop all the advertising spam. Doing the latter would stop most of the crap but I think that board has served its purpose and is no longer needed now. Any relevant or important article can just be posted and discussed in the main Bitcoin board but at the moment the majority of people who create threads in there are either promoting a site or are getting away with legalised plagiarism which they can get paid for on most campaigns.

I'm still of the opinion that that sub should be locked/archived. So are seemingly most of the staff last time we discussed it. It should be for notable sources, but it's been spammed with everything and everything for the past few years, not to mention all the alt coin spam which don't even belong there. It's also being abused by various websites as a promotional tool just to drive hits to their site. Any worthwhile article can just be posted and discussed in bitcoin discussion as they do anyway so losing it isn't really a big issue to me. When it was created any mention of bitcoin in the media was probably a big deal, but now it isn't. At a bare minimum we should change what can and can't be posted there and any bitcoin-related site should be prohibited and enforce the notable source rule more strictly to stop the promo spam.

People got paid to share news/article from news media? I was sure it's clever way to fulfill their signature campaign rules.

But it's pretty much useless idea without limitation such as only Member/Copper Member and above who can make thread on Press board.

It's abused both by sig spammers and the people who run the websites. Some people in the past have even used bots just to scrape sites, format them properly then post them there. It's a place where you can legally get away with copy and pasting because doing so isn't against the rules and for sig spammers they can grab an easy post without having to contribute anything.

If you report them they'll be trashed. That entire board should be retired and locked/archived now anyway as it's redundant and serves no real purpose other than to facilitate sig spammers to legally get away with copy and pasting (whether manually or with bots). Any notable press mention that is worthy of discussion can just be posted in the main sub anyway.

If we're all so well aligned with staff members - in what concerns that something needs to be done - why hasn't been any sort of feedback regarding this issue or even a thread created by anyone of them to openly discuss this? Is there something that I'm missing that's making me make a bad evaluation of the situation that we have?

[PrimeNumber7]

I would also point out that threads in the press board is a function of news articles about bitcoin. I might ask which news articles you would like to see discussed in the press board? In the past few weeks, I have created threads (actually thread, singular) about an article I found in a reputable news organization.

Anything that is newsworthy enough to appear in a mainstream/large/reputable news sources, and not simply in a crypto-only site. Thinking of recent developments, things such as Taproot and the US house passing the infrastructure bill and its related crypto provisions would definitely qualify as newsworthy and notable enough to be discussed. Looking at some of the recently created threads in the Press board by our spammer of the month, things such as the opinion of one person that Ethereum is better than Bitcoin, or the opinion of one legislature that bitcoin should be a payment option, are not newsworthy in the slightest.

There were two threads about articles that mentioned taproot. I did a google news search for "taproot" and reviewed the first 5 pages of results -- the only article I found was one published by CNBC, and isn't much better (IMO) than the two that were already posted.

I might ask my question another way and ask if you have a specific news article that you would have liked to discuss? (not a topic)

Really since bcash split from bitcoin, there has been very little drama, or contention about the future of bitcoin.

As I discussed somewhere earlier in this thread, I think that is part of the issue here. The number of actually newsworthy things happening to bitcoin or involving bitcoin is far smaller than the number of things you can scrape off the bottom of the barrel and churn out some completely trash click bait article about. Unless we clamp down on the spam, it will always outnumber and drown out the good/newsworthy topics.

Again, currently there are threads that have a last post made on Nov 1 on the first page of the press sub. If there is a thread about a legitimate news article being drowned out, it is taking a month for the thread to get drowned out.

I think the amount of activity (or the lack thereof) on the Press sub is a function of a lack of overall interesting news articles about bitcoin/crypto. There are simply not a lot of interesting news articles about bitcoin.

[o_e_l_e_o]

And yet, almost one year after nothing was done to follow up this poll.

Note that that poll is actually from 2017 - hilarious' reference to it is from 2020. So in 4 years since unanimous agreement from the staff that something needs to change, nothing has changed.

Again, currently there are threads that have a last post made on Nov 1 on the first page of the press sub. If there is a thread about a legitimate news article being drowned out, it is taking a month for the thread to get drowned out.

It's not a case of them being pushed off the front page - it's a case that many members aren't even going to bother to visit a board when they know >90% of the topics are plagiarized trash.

I think the amount of activity (or the lack thereof) on the Press sub is a function of a lack of overall interesting news articles about bitcoin/crypto. There are simply not a lot of interesting news articles about bitcoin.

Then the board has served its purpose and should be closed entirely, rather than just letting the Spammer of the Month rack up free advertising and free signature payments.

[Lucius]

Except that we can complain here forever and probably nothing will happen, how many participants of this topic made at least one report to moderator in Press board? I know many will say it’s a waste of time, but right now it’s the only way to discourage spammers from abusing that board.

I have about a dozen successfully handled reports recently in that board, and as of today, I am reporting all posts with the comment "no notable source/shilling" (insert two sites that make 99% of all links).

[LoyceV]

Except that we can complain here forever and probably nothing will happen, how many participants of this topic made at least one report to moderator in Press board?

I don't think I did. It is indeed a waste of time, but worse: it's such a waste I don't even read the board.

I have about a dozen successfully handled reports recently in that board, and as of today, I am reporting all posts with the comment "no notable source/shilling" (insert two sites that make 99% of all links).

If the board becomes readable again, I'll join

[o_e_l_e_o]

Except that we can complain here forever and probably nothing will happen, how many participants of this topic made at least one report to moderator in Press board? I know many will say it’s a waste of time, but right now it’s the only way to discourage spammers from abusing that board.

It is a waste of time. I have hundreds of good reports from that board. I have hundreds of good reports against individual users, such as CoinIdol News. The board is no better for it, it is no more usable, it has not attracted back good users, and CoinIdol News still isn't permabanned, despite having 100% of his posts deleted. Add all that to the fact that when I gave up reporting in the Press board, it was because many of my reports were going unhandled for threads which were just the usual copy and paste plagiarism with a link slapped on the end from the spammer of the month being employed by CoinTelegraph or whoever.

We have been reporting posts and discussing these issues for 6 years and the board is still a mess. If we aren't going to moderate it properly, then no amount of reports will fix that and we should just close the board entirely. As much as I would like a properly moderated board to discuss newsworthy developments, I'd rather have no board at all then have this legalized plagiarism spamfest.

[Lucius]

It is a waste of time. I have hundreds of good reports from that board. I have hundreds of good reports against individual users, such as CoinIdol News.

The user you mention no longer post in that board means that the reports were effective - and if we could somehow prevent only two spammers (currently) from making a mess on that board, the situation would return to normal to some extent.

As much as I would like a properly moderated board to discuss newsworthy developments, I'd rather have no board at all then have this legalized plagiarism spamfest.

There is an alternative solution for you and anyone who is bothered by what is happening there, just set the board to ignore and forget that it even exists.

If the board becomes readable again, I'll join

I will then waste my time and try to clean up the mess, someone still has to get their hands dirty - we know big gentlemen don’t like deep mud

[o_e_l_e_o]

The user you mention no longer post in that board means that the reports were effective

He was temporarily banned only after multiple users started threads complaining about him. As soon as his ban ran out he came back and started spamming exactly he had done before, and again, it took multiple posts in Meta before he was temp banned again. This has happened a couple of times, and given that he still isn't perma banned, means I suspect it will happen again. If you want to take over the role of reporting the same user 100+ times, be my guest, but I'd rather just shut the board entirely.

and if we could somehow prevent only two spammers (currently) from making a mess on that board, the situation would return to normal to some extent.

Until next month. There's always another Spammer of the Month!

[LeGaulois]

The worst thing is we could easily have a consensus on the problem, but there seems to be no determination from the administration to fix it.
And rarely a word from a moderator, we feel more like we're being ignored and talking in a hole. It's like fighting a war against the wind, you may have the biggest army,  the wind will always be there.

Maybe it's time to take it to another level and to complain about the people running campaigns and accepting this type of spammer. Risking their reputation on this job is risking their business. Follow the money. If they accepted 1-2 users like them, there are surely a lot of others crawling around different boards.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I wonder, could we make a bot that automatically reports in the Press board whenever a topic, with these details, is created? I'd thinking of a bot that does this in the entire forum, but having it just in the Press would be a good startup.

It could search the post and if it found that the user is just copying (plagiarizing) from an external source, it reports it. That way, we'll discourage them to continue doing this without having to actually change something in the rules. (And no one wastes their time by reporting)

Maybe it's time to take it to another level and to complain about the people running campaigns and accepting this type of spammer.

You can complain, but making them disapproving these users is a much harder thing to do. (And requires a little work from the admins' side)

[DaveF]

What gets me is the number of removed topics and no ban.
I know he is active on other boards so that might be a factor, but I would like to think that if I started that many topics wherever I would get a vacation from the forum for a few weeks.
But, as others have said, the mods / admins don't seem to care.

-Dave

[Csmiami]

I'd even go deeper in the rabbit hole and say that there's not either enough staff currently moderating the forum and/or the current staff doesn't want to waste their time moderating.

There's too many spam in way too many sections; the Press board is a good example, but as already pointed out, the same thing applies to the Bitcoin discussion board, Gambling too, not to go into the altcoin whole section... There's way too many spam being generated to be handled accordingly, and we may even be at a point in which only exemplary measures may have some impact. And that does not go against freedom of speech. Keeping things clean doesn't mean people can't express their oppinions, they simply should actually have an oppinion instead of regurgitating a quote or a completely empty post consisting on a few sentences that are only meant to reach the signature quota.

They simply have to step up their game; after X posts deleted for being completely empty or void of any argument, a short ban. If that keeps happening, a longer temp to end up with a perma-ban for literally spamming. Another twist; the bans should actually say the reason for it: you've had X posts deleted for being a signature campaign spam.

But seeing how most if not any proposal to tidy up the forum or X boards have ended, we can only wish Santa will bring us some of this for Xmas...

[Lucius]

If you want to take over the role of reporting the same user 100+ times, be my guest, but I'd rather just shut the board entirely.

You can also ask the admin to close some other boards like Bitcoin Discussion or Alternate cryptocurrencies, and I'm sure there are more which we can consider a spam paradise. When I read the posts in this thread it seems to me that I am doing something wrong by fighting spam and shitposting, but unlike endless discussions, I can at least show some concrete results - no matter what you and some other members call it a waste of time.