No more banner advertising: what's next?

[Sarah Azhari]

how to track it?

Forum funds is a good start.

Fantastic, bitcointalk is one the richest forum in the world with almost 25 Million USD funds. the forum shared $7 each.

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[Sandra_hakeem]

There's something I don't understand @NotATether.
Was there an initial ordeal made by Theymos in respect of banning signature campaigns lately?
Or are you just coming up with it as a deterrent? To get spammers enclosed in a dry well?

That's not an argument. Lets allow that remain as a question to be answered.

Sandra 👩‍🦱

I haven't heard of any talk from Theymos about banning signature campaigns. AFAIK, he just said he will no longer host the weekly banner ad (on the top of the pages) slots auctions.

Understood perfectly and that's good to hear -- I mean,if THEYMOS has stated such solid reasons then it'll not do much harm -- I took out time to read for myself.

So why are a few peeps around so obsessed with a kinda traumatic facts that signatures be placed on ban?
Does that have anything to do with securing the reason for these platform - which is Bitcoin?
 I don't know how you guys manage drastic situations in your little world, not to talk about a forum. Is that the most important thing to do now, when we are still tryna evade some furious punches From Craig?

Like it or not -- if this man prevails, which for sure, I know he can't -- we're all gonna set out on out normal lives, leaving this place dead cus he won't dance to our tune. Isn't this the right time for us to do whatever we can to save our COAST??

Now if the whole scenerio looks funny to you, then fine. You're not worth being a part in the first place.

Sandra☹️

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

Maybe signatures are to be banned next ? 

The signature campaigns bring free traffic to the forum. It would not be a good idea to ban them.

Bitcointalk really just has one purpose now and theymos has one job, and that is to make sure satoshi's posts remain accessible and in tact.

You don't need a working forum for that, just archiving would be enough.

And who reads archived information? I have been using internet since 2001 and I can not remember any archive site where I was looking for information. If search engine sent me there, I read one or two lines then closed the window. No one spend time in a graveyard.

[nutildah]

And who reads archived information? I have been using internet since 2001 and I can not remember any archive site where I was looking for information. If search engine sent me there, I read one or two lines then closed the window. No one spend time in a graveyard.

I do actually, quite a bit... its important in my line of work, which is more-or-less verifying authenticity of claims. And I don't think search engines crawl archives.

[BitcoinGirl.Club]

I do actually, quite a bit... its important in my line of work, which is more-or-less verifying authenticity of claims. And I don't think search engines crawl archives.

I was incorrect about search engines. My bad.
Yeah I am assuming I was too in archive sites to verify authenticity but I don't think I ever considered them to find knowledgeable information to study like I visit blogs, articles and forums.

[hilariousetc]

Personally, I think there's a few things theymos should do rather than nothing.

1) Offer or auction some long term deals to companies that are already trusted and have a history of advertising here. Many of these gambling companies are sponsoring streamers millions a month so I'm sure they'd put up a fairly large amount for a years ad subscription or something.

2) Hire someone trusted to vet all new adverts.

3 Implement Silver/Gold/Platinum/Lamborghini Memberships like the current Copper one that come with the benefits of a Full/Senior/Hero/Legendary etc, and maybe even some additional perks with a higher "premium" rank like the ability to change name, access to a exclusive sub board and so on.

Being able to purchase these memberships have numerous benefits:

Completely passive income for the forum
Essentially stops account sales and farming
Will severely dent people from fishing/begging for merit

how to track it?

Forum funds is a good start.

Fantastic, bitcointalk is one the richest forum in the world with almost 25 Million USD funds. the forum shared $7 each.

Whilst the forum does have a lot of money held in reserves it will only dwindle over time, and there's always the risk of bitcoin having a massive crash. We've already seen it lose well over half its value since the all time high. I'm sure we will see much more volatility over the next ten years with even worse crashes along the way.

[NotATether]

I do actually, quite a bit... its important in my line of work, which is more-or-less verifying authenticity of claims. And I don't think search engines crawl archives.

I was incorrect about search engines. My bad.
Yeah I am assuming I was too in archive sites to verify authenticity but I don't think I ever considered them to find knowledgeable information to study like I visit blogs, articles and forums.

Funny how you mention that, because I was also planning to make a digital museum of all Apple product press-release Pages by collecting them from the Wayback Machine.

[dkbit98]

1) Offer or auction some long term deals to companies that are already trusted and have a history of advertising here. Many of these gambling companies are sponsoring streamers millions a month so I'm sure they'd put up a fairly large amount for a years ad subscription or something.

I don't think that theymos is a kind of guy that can easily change his opinions once he makes them, and there could be some legal issues he is concerned for future as well.
Long term sponsorship is not a bad idea per se, but even the best companies can go bust or terminate their business, just look what happened in 2022.

2) Hire someone trusted to vet all new adverts.

Moderators could probably take over this work, and hiring new people just means more spending of forum funds.

Completely passive income for the forum
Essentially stops account sales and farming
Will severely dent people from fishing/begging for merit

Reality is that there is no magic trick that can fix all this things with creating new ranks in forum.
Sure, I like the idea of generating passive income similar like for Copper membership, but I think creating new ranks will only create more complications, and I doubt many people would spend coins for that.

Whilst the forum does have a lot of money held in reserves it will only dwindle over time, and there's always the risk of bitcoin having a massive crash. We've already seen it lose well over half its value since the all time high. I'm sure we will see much more volatility over the next ten years with even worse crashes along the way.

I don't know how much money is forum exactly spending for maintaining everything running smooth, but I could say the same thing for any other (non-bitcoin) forum that exist today.
How do you think they are managing to stay alive and survive even without having any Bitcoins in their wallets?

[suzanne5223]

Maybe signatures are to be banned next ?  

No

Read what theymos talked about the reasons, not worth the time spent on it is there. To ban ads will not affect this forum traffic, but if signature is banned, there would be less traffic. Many people that supposed to be exposed to what bitcoin is properly will be unable to.

Signature campaign makes this forum to be lively too. Banning signature campaign is not possible because theymos will also consider others that are using it as an incentive.

I think we are missing the point here because Theymos never really ban the forum banner ad he said "If you'd like to advertise: I will consider offers to advertise, especially if you've advertised before."
Technically, he is just concerned about maintaining the standards of this forum by not hosting ads for illegal or scam projects since the time spent researching each project didn't worth it.

Having said that, I believe this forum was created to be the venue for information about announcements, events, establishment, and important grades of blockchain, altcoin, crypto-related business and BTC. For to maintain this standard I don't see the ban of signature ads.

[Pmalek]

Back when I suggested that we take part in advertising good Bitcoin projects and services for free, I PMed theymos to see what he feels about it and whether or not he would be willing to help in providing some ad space for these campaigns. Regular ad sales were still a thing back then, of course, but there were also factoid slots. He said he would think about giving out some factoid slots if the projects that are advertised aren't for profit. The best thing is to just PM theymos and see how he feels about it. 

[PrimeNumber7]

3 Implement Silver/Gold/Platinum/Lamborghini Memberships like the current Copper one that come with the benefits of a Full/Senior/Hero/Legendary etc, and maybe even some additional perks with a higher "premium" rank like the ability to change name, access to a exclusive sub board and so on.

Completely passive income for the forum
Essentially stops account sales and farming
Will severely dent people from fishing/begging for merit

Another similar option (with similar benefits) would be to allow people to purchase merit from the forum in order to rank up. I think a lot of people would probably be interested in buying Lamborghini memberships, but some may also be close to Legendary but are struggling to get enough merit to rank up, and may want to pay to get the ranking.

1) Offer or auction some long term deals to companies that are already trusted and have a history of advertising here. Many of these gambling companies are sponsoring streamers millions a month so I'm sure they'd put up a fairly large amount for a years ad subscription or something.

I don't think that theymos is a kind of guy that can easily change his opinions once he makes them, and there could be some legal issues he is concerned for future as well.

I disagree. In my experience, theymos is open to listening to arguments in favor of changing policy, and will do so if a sufficiently strong argument is made.

It seems that theymos already seems to be open to long-term deals, as he said that he will accept private offers to advertise. I think long-term deals are more of an issue for advertisers because there are many unknown variables, such as how effective an ad is, forum traffic in the future, how profitable a business will be in the future, etc.

Theymos mentioned that he thought the process of buying ad space has a lot of friction. This could be addressed by automating the process of which advertisers purchase advertising. The initial vetting/setup is probably something that shouldn't be automated. Someone could potentially create an automated ad buying software that advertisers could buy ads on. I am not sure if the cost of creating these software would be worth the potentially higher revenue for the forum, especially if it needs to be integrated with the existing SMF software.

[UserU]

I don't know how much money is forum exactly spending for maintaining everything running smooth, but I could say the same thing for any other (non-bitcoin) forum that exist today.
How do you think they are managing to stay alive and survive even without having any Bitcoins in their wallets?

Assuming the forum software is free, since the version has been discontinued eons ago, there are hosting plans and CDN (Cloudflare) services although there are custom-priced ones to accommodate the traffic, monthly expenses might reach several hundred dollars. Bitcointalk is mainly about the traffic so there are no SaaS or funds here to guard against threats.

We haven't factored in mods and staffs payrolls yet, but those are a portion from the ad sales IIRC. Current funds should be more than sufficient to sustain the entire operation even after we die.

[UmerIdrees]

There's something I don't understand @NotATether.
Was there an initial ordeal made by Theymos in respect of banning signature campaigns lately?
Or are you just coming up with it as a deterrent? To get spammers enclosed in a dry well?

That's not an argument. Lets allow that remain as a question to be answered.

Sandra 👩‍🦱

I haven't heard of any talk from Theymos about banning signature campaigns. AFAIK, he just said he will no longer host the weekly banner ad (on the top of the pages) slots auctions.

If we read the text it is clear that theymos does not want to spend 30 mins to figure out of the services offered by the ads are legit or not.
He has a lot of money so the forum can be run without any ad advertisement.

Signature campaigns are something different as money from the signature campaign does not go in the pocket of admins, it is spent by the project owners for advertisement and distributed to the posters here. Forum gets indirect benefit from them in the form of traffic.

Firstly, I'm finding it too difficult to determine which services are legit/safe and which are not. It takes me 30+ minutes to research each new service

Finally, bitcointalk.org has a large reserve of BTC, so we're able to continue operating without ad revenue for many years.

[Pmalek]

Was there an initial ordeal made by Theymos in respect of banning signature campaigns lately?

I am sure theymos isn't considering such actions. He is aware what that would do to the activity of Bitcointalk. Posts written thanks to signature campaigns and various bounty activities amount to 85-90% of the forum's activity. Remove that, and you are left with 30-40 bitcoiners participating in an occasional discussion or two.

Imagine running a food market and deciding to ban the sale of fresh fruit and vegetables, and allowing only seeds and animal food, for example. You are still going to have customers, but you stabbed yourself in the eye just to see if you will bleed. There is no need to do that.