For example, here are the first 5 bans issued in the recent wave, 7 days after their ban (data is updated in near real time):
That's a nice way of visualizing what was to be expected: they don't post because they're interested in the topic, they're posting to get paid. The fact that so many users post 100% less fits my suspicion that most of those accounts are owned by a small group of account farmers.
When a Sigban expires, or when it gets removed, it would be nice to also visualize the changes in their posting behavior. Even better if you can correlate it to being accepted in a signature campaign.
We've all looked at the Stake campaign as the worst breeding ground for spam, but Rainbet seems to be even worse. Quite dominant on the list, at least judging by the avatars.
The users in the "Rainbet" campaign are doing significantly better than the ones
wearing the signature without being accepted.
Technically they are not participating in the campaign which is why there seem to be many accounts that are banned and are wearing the rainbet avatar.
They could still be paid for their "advertising", it's just not published.
This user hasn't made any post (ever) because it's a test account made by
theymos LoyceV.
FTFY
I created
TrustTestUser for
my Beginners guide to correct use of the Trust system. Theymos' test account is
test123.
No post = nothing in the archive = we can't derivate its username. There are a few solutions, including using Loyce's username list, but idk. I don't see this as a big problem.
Just a heads up: my username list probably missed a few username changes over the years.
If someone could create a visual table based on the available data
~
Manager's name:
Total number of slots in all campaigns:
Number of banned users
Ban in % of total slots (all campaigns of the selected manager).
The closest I've seen is
Signature Ban List,
but it also lists users who weren't accepted in the campaign. That's going to be a lot of work to (manually) check, and impossible if the campaign spreadsheet isn't public.
Is it too much if the conclusion is drawn that the campaign managers are largely responsible for the production of spam that is the subject of this action?
Its my opinion that they share a lot of responsibility for the spam situation. Obviously its no longer a viable idea to employ a "pay per post" model as that is responsible for the most annoying kinds of spammy behaviors.
In my first signature campaign, I always felt like
guitarplinker was watching my posts. Later, I felt like
DarkStar_ was watching my posts. Even though I don't think I'm a shitposter, I was always very aware that someone's watching, and I don't want to disappoint them. In my opinion, every campaign manager should give their campaign participants some feeling of "you are being watched".
A lot of the problem occurs when, for whatever reason, managers don't perform basic quality checks of their participants. For several campaigns, there seems to be no standards or quality control at all.
This brings me to my next point: campaign managers should also feel like they're being watched! Running a campaign should be a privilage that can be taken away. The
Signature Campaign Guidelines are clear, but not enforced:
As a signature campaign operator you will ultimately be held responsible for the quality of posts of users bearing your signature advertisement and you will need to monitor your users closely or it will be quickly abused. If you are running a campaign and it becomes blatantly obvious to Staff that you are doing little to nothing to stop spam on your campaign you will be issued a PM warning by a Global Moderator that you need to make immediate improvements to curb low-quality posts. You will have 7 days to remove low-quality posters and respond to the message detailing what you are going to do to make changes to your campaign to reduce the amount of spam. If improvements are not noticeable within 21 days of that and Staff do not believe you are doing enough to prevent low quality posts your signatures will be blacklisted from the forum by an Admin and you will no longer be permitted to advertise here in such a way. The Staff and Admins do not want to have to do this but it's a last resort in an attempt to clean up the forum as signature campaigns cannot continue to operate here in such a lazy way as it is not fair that others have to go through pages of drivel to find anything of substance nor should Staff be left to clean up the mess you are paying people to make.
I feel like we're approaching this bottom-up instead of top-down. We've been reporting individual posts for years, and now some users get a signature ban, but it would have been much better to start from the top: if campaign managers who accepted spam got banned, there would be less posts to report and less signatures to ban.
Just imagine an ideal world in which all campaign managers did their job correctly: there'd be less spam, less signature bans, less posts to report and less work for Mods.Also in my opinion, managers should be asking themselves what qualities do they want to try to instill in others, what behaviors are they currently rewarding, and do they honestly believe these behaviors are a net positive for individual growth or the forum as a whole.
Personal financial interests don't necessarily align with forum interests.
