Signature Campaign Ban Suggestion: Punishment length of time

[notocactus]

The suggestion:
First offence - 2 week signature campaign ban.
Second offence - 2 month sig ban
Third offence - 2 year sig ban

The punishment length of time can be decided by the forum admins with community suggestions and I won't discuss about the ban time length.

In short, I think

• With users who farmed merit with clear evidence: double the ban time length.
• With users who use AI: double the ban time length.

Reasons, if I am a spammer but write posts by myself, at least I put some human effort into my posts, even they're shitposts, they're mine. With people who used AI for their posts, they want to fake their posts, cheat the forum, so if there is a double ban time length, I think it is well deserved.

Same with people who farmed merit, ranked up and spammed.

I believe what has been used recent weeks won't reduce spams significantly and won't be able to maintain success a long time. Demerit will achieve that purpose.

Even I think the current progress does not solve problems.

What are used now as solutions to fight against spam is like doing something on tip of an iceberg, and it will not prevent spammers.

• Merit system successfully prevented spammers ranked up.
• Before it failed when merit sources got more merits, and merits to shitposts were allowed gradually with time. That is like legally allowing spammers to rank up.
• Why we don't start at this point, fix the merit system? It will resolve the cause, rather than trying to cut grass on tip of the ground.
• If continue using this solution, it's like (again) another legal allowance towards spammers: like it's ok, you can farm merit, rank up, post shit, get money until we catch you.
• They farmed merit, and they must lose their ranks.
• Bring the demerit button, community can report merited shitposts, to derank spammers. They will stop posting from such accounts and will not rank up their new accounts in their old ways that now can not be used without losing ranks.
• Furthermore, it will return to a harder time for spammer to rank up again like how merit system succeeded years ago.
• Spammers ranked up by farming, already results in many things: spam endemic in the forum, they got merit undeservedly and made it harder to other people to rank up - like merit sources and forum members will feel harder to send merit, they suspect about many things; lastly such beautiful merited accounts can easily be accepted in campaigns because they had more merit totally and in last 120 days while in quality they are shitposters and even worse than accounts with lower merits.

Lastly, I feel like the forum accepts that things can happen shadily in local boards and ignore it, until such shitposters after ranking up by local boards start to bring their shitposts to English boards.

Think:
If we force spammers to rank up by posting good, we force them to have a good writing habit, and when they ranked up already, they will more likely post good, or at least better than spammers.

Let's create a community-led/ reported thread to demerit them in decentralized way.

A person who ranked up from posting good will make it a writing and posting habit and will not lose it after ranking up to Hero member or Legendary member rank, whereas the spammers who ranked up by shitposts to Hero/ Legendary member rank will continue his habit (writing shitposts). While with time, the farm becomes bigger and more shits around.

Will it stop spammers?
No.
It only triggers them to make longer posts while they're still shitposts. It's how they tried to hide their shitposts, and make it like long posts are quality ones. They already did that to gather merit, before their farms became big enough to circulate merit inside their locals. Now, it's time for making long but pointless posts again to bypass this signature ban.

Because they ranked up by farming merit, why don't solve this issue?
If the merit system forces spammers writing good posts to rank up, somehow and somewhat it forces them creating quality-posting habit. Not all of them change to have that habit but some will.
In contrast, if forum community are "Blinded" to let spammers farming and ranking up easily as they have farmed merit in about last 3 years when merit sources asked for more merits, the community let spammers bypass the merit system, rank up, post shitposts around like nothing.

I even think spammers who have clear records of merit farming deserve to have a double-time ban. For example if the other users have 1-year ban, that merit-farming spammer needs to receive a 2-year ban.
Same with spammers used AI. No excuse. Because they double break many rules.
It is my thinking if the forum want to continue with signature ban on spammers but I think if the Demerit button is deployed, it would be better to derank spammers, and force them making better posts, having better posting habit.

[PrivacyG]

Reasons, if I am a spammer but write posts by myself, at least I put some human effort into my posts, even they're shitposts, they're mine. With people who used AI for their posts, they want to fake their posts, cheat the forum, so if there is a double ban time length, I think it is well deserved.

I have never used an 'AI' detector before.  My only fear about your suggestion is.  How possible is it to get a false positive result, even when using multiple separate detectors?

I believe what has been used recent weeks won't reduce spams significantly and won't be able to maintain success a long time. Demerit will achieve that purpose.

I thought about this recently too.  But worse than Demeriting.  I would personally drop the account by one rank when they offend the rules for a second time.  And not only that but if someone gets their rank dropped, they should earn the same number of Merits to rank up again as if they never did.  250 Merits to get back to Hero Member if you were dropped from that to Sr. Member.  500 if you got dropped from Legendary to Hero.  And so on.

I imagine a lot of accounts will come back after the banning period and try to stick to the minimum effort possible only so they can continue to spam while avoiding being banned again.  The incentive would be a lot higher if a second offense meant a rank drop followed by having to earn a ton of Merits again to recover.

But that would also generate a lot more drama too.

[notocactus]

I have never used an 'AI' detector before.  My only fear about your suggestion is.  How possible is it to get a false positive result, even when using multiple separate detectors?

False positive happens but if a user has many posts with AI-generated flags, I believe that there is no false positive can save that user. It is similar to how people try to spin around for plagiarism and if a user has such accusation, there is clear evidence of shitposts, not only AI or plagiarism.
New sort of plagiarism.
Is it plagiarism?
Text spinning/disguised plagiarism.

I thought about this recently too.  But worse than Demeriting.  I would personally drop the account by one rank when they offend the rules for a second time.  And not only that but if someone gets their rank dropped, they should earn the same number of Merits to rank up again as if they never did.  250 Merits to get back to Hero Member if you were dropped from that to Sr. Member.  500 if you got dropped from Legendary to Hero.  And so on.

I imagine a lot of accounts will come back after the banning period and try to stick to the minimum effort possible only so they can continue to spam while avoiding being banned again.  The incentive would be a lot higher if a second offense meant a rank drop followed by having to earn a ton of Merits again to recover.

theymos did demerit in the past when the merit system was very young and one or two merit sources abused sourced merit. Now it seems he did not mind to do that while perhaps he has been thinking and cooking something behind the scene.

I'm still thinking about ways to resolve this issue, possibly involving rejiggering how merit works.

With demeriting, in the past, theymos only reverted abused merit, and stopped there, while in my opinion, people who received abused merit and circulated those smerit around need to be reverted too.

In the future, if there is such demerit, double reverting like this will make more sense.
Do you think double revert of received merit and smerit from abuse cases will make more drama?

But that would also generate a lot more drama too.

With spammers, there will be no drama, they deserve that. With merit farmers, do you believe that their dramas will end with good results for them?

[mindrust]

That's a good suggestion imo. The punishment should be layered, not random and based on feelings. If a person insists on not fixing himself, then he should get punished again and again. I used to play some online game and the chat mods were doing that exactly. First mute was 30 secs. Then 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes and before you know it, you'd be looking at a 3 months chat mute. It was safe and effective. I eventually quit the game tho because I kept breaking their chatbox rules. 

[alegotardo]

The suggestion:
First offence - 2 week signature campaign ban.
Second offence - 2 month sig ban
Third offence - 2 year sig ban

I do not know if I like this... the principle behind your idea is good, but I think it is "weak" to be applied as an automatic rule... the bitcointalk gains predictability, but I think it would become too lenient in some cases and unfair wqith others.

I agree that this would good to avoid arbitrariness, create a logical progression for repeat offender and especially because it gives the user an opportunity to correct their behavior.
But the problem is: The "first offense" may not be the first bad behavior of this person. From what I’ve seen of the users who have already been penalized, many of them have been making low quality posts, creating useless threads and creating multiple alternative accounts for months, so its not fair at all to give them a punishment of only 2 weeks.

But, aside these cases, for someone who is actually caught making mistakes for the first time, this system is indeed interesting. The problem is that this would not apply to the most of the users that @nutildah is banning.

[katanic97]

That's a good suggestion imo. The punishment should be layered, not random and based on feelings. If a person insists on not fixing himself, then he should get punished again and again. I used to play some online game and the chat mods were doing that exactly. First mute was 30 secs. Then 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes and before you know it, you'd be looking at a 3 months chat mute. It was safe and effective. I eventually quit the game tho because I kept breaking their chatbox rules. 

And if the game had been paying you to play, would you have quit?
Jokes aside, i also think it's fair to give some users a warning so they know that their posts aren't useful or of good quality and can improve them. We know there are definitely members who would ignore the warnings and eventually end up getting banned. So i'm in favor of first drawing their attention to the issue and pointing out their mistakes.

[Satofan44]

That's a good suggestion imo. The punishment should be layered, not random and based on feelings. If a person insists on not fixing himself, then he should get punished again and again. I used to play some online game and the chat mods were doing that exactly. First mute was 30 secs. Then 1 minute, 2 minutes, 5 minutes, 10 minutes and before you know it, you'd be looking at a 3 months chat mute. It was safe and effective. I eventually quit the game tho because I kept breaking their chatbox rules. 

The progressiveness of the punishments are not in question, they already exist. The issue is with the leniency towards extreme abusers and punishing small abusers over extreme abusers. If someone is speeding 20 mph above the limit they should be punished the same as someone speeding 100 mph over the limit?  That would be a system of peak idiocracy.

Jokes aside, i also think it's fair to give some users a warning so they know that their posts aren't useful or of good quality and can improve them. We know there are definitely members who would ignore the warnings and eventually end up getting banned. So i'm in favor of first drawing their attention to the issue and pointing out their mistakes.

The signature ban is the warning, the user should be banned permanently were this place not extremely lenient. Everyone who is asking for leniency is trying to make sure that the ban is short for when they or their own accounts get banned. 

[Rikafip]

Jokes aside, i also think it's fair to give some users a warning so they know that their posts aren't useful or of good quality and can improve them.

Tbh, that's the job (or at least it should be) of a signature campaign manager. But for whatever reason, some of them have no problem paying for shitposts, so it's no wonder they come here surprised when they get sig banned.

[katanic97]

Jokes aside, i also think it's fair to give some users a warning so they know that their posts aren't useful or of good quality and can improve them.

Tbh, that's the job (or at least it should be) of a signature campaign manager. But for whatever reason, some of them have no problem paying for shitposts, so it's no wonder they come here surprised when they get sig banned.

I've seen several cases where some members were removed from campaigns and new members were being recruited on the same day, probably because of the quality of their posts. But yes, it would be much easier if campaign managers handled this, since there are more of them. As it is, one person with support is sometimes not enough.