Signature Ban Power

[dzungmobile]

I looked it up. It seems like BadBear used to be an admin from around 2015 to 2016, which would explain why he had access to IP logs.

BadBear has 2 pinned threads.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=718124.0
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=408265.0

I check the thread [LIST] Forum's admins/ global moderators/ staffs but I don't find BadBear there.

Next, I check with Wayback machine and one of his two pinned threads, then here is the result.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140325225356/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=408265.0

BadBear used to be a forum's Global moderator in 2014.

During years from 2015 to 2016, he was an admin too.
https://web.archive.org/web/20150908130759/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=408265.0
https://web.archive.org/web/20160127073943/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=408265.0

In 2017, no longer an admin, global moderator or moderator
https://web.archive.org/web/20171124211433/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=408265.0

[FinneysTrueVision]

Post quality is subjective for instance Fivestar4everMVP being sig banned is unfair in my eyes because he has pretty ok posts, but I can guess there's still sockpuppetry

He might have improved his writing more recently, making his posts less long winded and not burst posting as much. Still, I thought it was a justifiable ban. A lot of his posts were generic filler that repeated the same basic ideas about gambling.

Here’s just one example.

You are right, definitely but is there ever a time when loses don't feel real? Who are the type of gamblers that go through such experiences of feeling that their loses are not real? This I believe is another question we should be asking because as a matter of fact, when gambling loses doesn't feel real, it's a dangerous thing because this could easily lead someone into getting addicted to gambling.

Loses at all time is also supposed to serve as warning to watch your limit, for example, I can't keep and losing and keep gambling, at a point, I will be forced to stop because the loses are becoming too much, at least, I stop for that day and come back to try again another day..
But when you don't feel your loses, you keep gambling until you go broke, and just then you realize you just have to find a way to keep gambling so as to maintain that same energy it produces, when one gets to this level, addiction have set in..

We could probably accuse most users on the forum of the same thing to some extent, but when a person is making 50+ of these kinds of posts per week then it becomes excessive.

[Sandra_hakeem]

There is no rule that alternative accounts, if one account is blocked, do not have the right to write from another unblocked account on the forum. This means no improvement is expected (since there are alts) since there may be less activity (there is no motivation to pay), but the quality will remain the same.

Like driving your motorbike or car, there is a driving license and if your driving license is invalid or suspended, you are no longer allowed to drive your bike or car. That means you are forced to use public transportation or any other means until the suspension period expires, and likely after that you will have to change your driving habit on the road somewhat.

Exactly! Why? Well that's because it won't make much sense to ban an act, but not the perpetrator themselves. It's not like (also using the license example) if your license is suspended, since it is tagged to maybe a Tesla or something, you can now make a new license and drive a mclaren without breaching the legal suspension tickets. You are still the same violator, don't you get it?

The cause is from farmers with many accounts that overwhelm them in posting management.
With many accounts, they can not write good posts, as their brain and energy has to be shared to many accounts.~snip

Yeah I get your point.If my memory serves me right, there was a poll on the reputation board about this.

[alegotardo]

The question is accurate and the answers here are not. Too many Offside...
@Hhampuz, you can pm @theymos to have the answer in case he noticed the topic but didn't answer here.
I will not ask why you opened the topic in the first place because I know the answer. Your path contains a lot of mines, good luck.

I believe his goal is exactly to bring the discussion to public eye, not just to find out the answer, which he may already know.

Anyway, as you said yourself... let's be cautious, this is something that only a few people have courage to ask, but the clarification is for everyone, and that is why I believe the question was asked in a thread here and not through a PM.

[mikeywith]

I do agree that we don't want this place to be censored, however, this is only a sigban, it's not like he can ban people from posting, he only limits their ability to make money which still is a sort of punishment but not purely censorship.

As for the cases you posted, honestly, I didn't go through them to decide anything but i'd guess I could trust your judgement, so go ahead and appeal to theymos, show him how nutildah sucks, if enough people and/or enough cases get brought up he will be removed from that position.

One thing i hate about how the forum became is that most active folks nowadays are fucking cowards and too afraid to say shit because they are earning money and fear tags or are afraid of their campaign manager's friend, they don't stand up against moderators, DTs and now the new "semi-moderator", just like the trust system, we can chose to nag about or actually do something.

@LFC, the last part isn't meant for you, you are already doing a great job by criticizing him and actually listing names of people that you think shouldn't have a sigban, I hope nutildah will review those and make the right decision and if he doesn't, the community should protest to theymos.

[nutildah]

As for the cases you posted, honestly, I didn't go through them to decide anything but i'd guess I could trust your judgement, so go ahead and appeal to theymos, show him how nutildah sucks, if enough people and/or enough cases get brought up he will be removed from that position.
...
@LFC, the last part isn't meant for you, you are already doing a great job by criticizing him and actually listing names of people that you think shouldn't have a sigban, I hope nutildah will review those and make the right decision and if he doesn't, the community should protest to theymos.

I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you suggesting I perform a review every time somebody disagrees with a sigban?

We have a process in place which involves opening an appeal thread in Meta. Anyone can voice their support for the affected party in said thread and it will be taken into consideration before making a decision. In these threads I will also provide an explanation of why the user was sigbanned.

[Revolution2025]

The lack of activity from users doesn't seem to indicate that they've left, abandoned the platform, taken offense, or anything else... Most likely, they have other accounts that they decided to “grow” during the ban period..

in otherwords,

more sigban is = more alt accounts 

more spamming, more shitposts

this is interesting

so how do they rank up a new account with spams and shitposts

this is just a case of erroneously offering a solution to create a more bigger problems

you and your cohorts have a lot of work to do then

such as checking... wake up time, posting style, tracking IP addresses, wallet connections, merit transaction, blockchain transaction etc in order to identify alts of sigban profiles

[Satofan44]

As for the cases you posted, honestly, I didn't go through them to decide anything but i'd guess I could trust your judgement, so go ahead and appeal to theymos, show him how nutildah sucks, if enough people and/or enough cases get brought up he will be removed from that position.

All the cases that he brought forward are of users that are just shitposting useless generic content for money,

One thing i hate about how the forum became is that most active folks nowadays are fucking cowards and too afraid to say shit because they are earning money and fear tags or are afraid of their campaign manager's friend, they don't stand up against moderators, DTs and now the new "semi-moderator", just like the trust system, we can chose to nag about or actually do something.

Every system that theymos has introduced here has been completely corrupted by incentives and the status quo. Everything is about the money, hence why this place has devolved to one of the shittest platforms related to Bitcoin. Remember where it started, and who was present here in the early days -- look at it now. 99% of the posters don't give a single fuck about Bitcoin, they are just 3rd world parasites treating this as a "work" platform.

this is just a case of erroneously offering a solution to create a more bigger problems

Absolutely, it is better to do nothing at all so that your alt accounts can avoid getting banned.  

[LTU_btc]

The lack of activity from users doesn't seem to indicate that they've left, abandoned the platform, taken offense, or anything else... Most likely, they have other accounts that they decided to “grow” during the ban period.. We've hardly seen any disagreement with the bans among 90% of users. Are they all in agreement? Probably, or most likely, they have other accounts that have remained "for now" in the shadows.

I doubt that many sigbanned users have clean alt accounts that they decided to grow now. Maybe some have, but probably not significant part. It's not that easy to ''grow'' account now, especially if you're average signature spammer. Well, unless you obtain merits in dirty ways.
But even if such accounts exist, I don't see big problem. If they switch to spam from other account, it's only matter of time when they will get sigbanned again with alt account.

[nutildah]

I'm pausing with the sigbans until I upload the new scores, which should be in a couple days (I will bump the locked sigban thread when it happens).

In the meantime, we should have an honest conversation about what this forum is about and what constitutes "noise."

Obviously the forum is also for conversation about subjects beyond Bitcoin. 90% of the conversation I make isn't about Bitcoin, and I don't think anyone should be held to a standard in that regard.

We're adding to this dynamic the element of getting paid to post. This is of course the primary driver of "unnecessary conversation", which (as I define it) are posts that don't advance or contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way. The strongest indicators of a poster's inclination for unnecessary conversation are:

1) Overall lack of merits. Compared to their peers, these accounts hardly ever receive merits; not only because they are posting in places unlikely to receive merits but also because nobody is reading or connecting with their posts. The standard isn't high here. One merited post a month is more than most sigbanned users are posting, up to this point.

2) Repetitiveness of words and subjects. Posters who have run out things to say will repeat recently-expressed ideas, frequently using the same or similar words to do so. This can be calculated by combining a user's most recent body of posts and measuring how often they repeat words or phrases. Unsurprisingly, posters whose post history is defined by recycling information in this manner are highly unlikely to receive merits, and when they do, they are often from similarly-repetitive posters.

3) Moderation and community signals. If a poster has an extreme number of posts deleted by moderators, or a high posts deleted/made ratio, its a strong indicator that both moderators and community are unappreciative of their posts. I've never based a sigban on a user's trust history but it shouldn't be surprising that many of the sigbanned are tagged as spammers or AI posters.

A combination of these 3 things is more-or-less how I've been identifying sigban candidates thus far. Why? Because I feel posters who fall into 2 or 3 of these categories probably shouldn't get paid for their posts, and letting them continue uninterrupted sets a bad precedent. People should aspire to be more than an unremarkable shitposter for a living. If this is your only source of income, take it seriously. Also, giving something back to the community occasionally in terms of sincere, honest participation probably wouldn't hurt.

I understand you may have concerns about how each thing is measured, but for now let's focus on examples of persisting injustice caused by the current system. (You don't have to mention arallmuus, I already know about that.) I don't think its right for me to talk about the reasons behind individual user sigbans without their permission, so for someone you strongly believe was treated unfairly, PM them and either ask them to open an appeal thread in Meta or if you can open the thread on their behalf. I will accept that, if you already got permission from the account requesting the appeal.

Thanks for reading through this. Let's try to find some common ground.

[Hhampuz]

~

This is a good post and I appreciate it!

I agree with you on all of these points, trust me, as a campaign manager nothing delights me more than when a bad/robotic poster gets a slap on the wrist and a sig ban since there's no benefit to me at all whether or not a specific user is in or out of my campaign. I can easily find replacements so that's not a concern either.

My only issue with this whole thing was the initial lack of transparency (perhaps you were as transparent as you possibly could and while fighting the "good fight" you didn't see what others may have experienced).

The arallmuus case was the main reason I took issue, indeed. I did message you privately about taking a closer look at it as it was pretty much the only one I felt didn't deserve a ban, again to no benefit of me, and how that was handled was not how I had hoped.

All that being said, the other issue was the whole multi-account saga including someone I consider to be a friend but that's not related to sig bans so no reason to dwell further, although it did start to feel like certain sections and users were getting targeted more so than others which may or may not be true. My main goal ever since I started "working" here has been to ensure people can secure some sort of income while just talking with like-minded people since this economy is incredibly unique, and that income now also includes anything you get paid for cleaning up the forum - and I would not want to see that being removed either but I did have a few suggestions to theymos about better streamlining the entire process and ensure fair and just judgements similarly to what he did with the treasurer situation.

I digress but (and even though you didn't post this just for me), I appreciate this and I do believe common ground can be found between admins, mods and regular users. We all most likely want less spam but even if we don't like it there are a lot of genuine users here who are helped out in their real lives MASSIVELY by the sig payments they receive each week - whether we like it or not.

[nutildah]

This is a good post and I appreciate it!

Thanks, I'm glad you feel that way.

I agree with you on all of these points, trust me, as a campaign manager nothing delights me more than when a bad/robotic poster gets a slap on the wrist and a sig ban since there's no benefit to me at all whether or not a specific user is in or out of my campaign. I can easily find replacements so that's not a concern either.

Wouldn't it behoove you to try to hire better quality posters instead of finding an instant replacement? This would save you time in the long run while also signaling to the community that it pays to be a thoughtful poster. Its a win/win for both you and the forum. As a campaign manager and forum celebrity, you are a primary guard against the influence of spam culture. If you disagree, I'd like to know what it would take to make you want to hire better quality posters.

The arallmuus case was the main reason I took issue, indeed. I did message you privately about taking a closer look at it as it was pretty much the only one I felt didn't deserve a ban, again to no benefit of me, and how that was handled was not how I had hoped.

I apologize for not living up to your expectations but I think the issue being resolved from start to finish within 5 days is pretty good, and I don't want to create expectations that I'll be able to do better than that.

My main goal ever since I started "working" here has been to ensure people can secure some sort of income while just talking with like-minded people

Alright, let's focus on this. While its a noble personal goal, you can see how it might conflict with what we're hoping to accomplish here, depending on who you're helping and our own views on that poster's output. I know you didn't mean "like minded people" as in they're the same person running 3-10 different accounts, but more often than not, this is the case, and I have to disagree with including them as anybody's peers... Additionally, anybody who manufactures conversation solely for their own financial benefit shouldn't be posting in the first place. But the solution may not be a full ban, and that's where sigbans come into play, as (what I believe is) a reasonable deterrent against unnecessary conversation.

If you disagree with my assessment about what constitutes unnecessary conversation or that it should be used as a reason for sigbans, I'd like to know why, because I think we can both learn from each other and perhaps prevent issues down the road.

[libert19]

...there are a lot of genuine users here who are helped out in their real lives MASSIVELY by the sig payments they receive each week - whether we like it or not.

Why is it that signature campaigners alone are deemed recipient of the signature economy here, and rarely bounty managers themselves while it being the fact that they are recipient of the same. What am I missing?

[Satofan44]

I digress but (and even though you didn't post this just for me), I appreciate this and I do believe common ground can be found between admins, mods and regular users. We all most likely want less spam but even if we don't like it there are a lot of genuine users here who are helped out in their real lives MASSIVELY by the sig payments they receive each week - whether we like it or not.

Which is more important? The benefits to Bitcoin or the benefits to the genuine individuals? Time for a perspective check.

Wouldn't it behoove you to try to hire better quality posters instead of finding an instant replacement? This would save you time in the long run while also signaling to the community that it pays to be a thoughtful poster. Its a win/win for both you and the forum. As a campaign manager and forum celebrity, you are a primary guard against the influence of spam culture. If you disagree, I'd like to know what it would take to make you want to hire better quality posters.

For some reason, all campaigns try to fill up spots as fast as possible. It never made any sense. Simply having some kind of weekly or monthly budget does not mean that all funds have to be spent ASAP.

Why is it that signature campaigners alone are deemed recipient of the signature economy here, and rarely bounty managers themselves while it being the fact that they are recipient of the same. What am I missing?

Don't even go there, who benefits from what in this system.

[khatarnak]

Was this power given out to a select few members in order to combat spam on your own initiative @theymos or were you approached by someone with a plan and an ask to get this power?

Finally someone asked theymos a question. 😂
The guy is Like jesus.
People have been quoting things theymos said 10 years ago like it's scripture.

[alani123]

~

I wanted to respond more directly here.

Sockpuppetry should also be banned. At the age of LLMs it's kinda easy for someone with an above esversge IQ to operate multiple accounts for profit without much effort. Incentives for account farming become much more rampant if suspicious IP activity goes unchecked.

Hopefully theymos can entrust you or someone with that data with the purpose of going after sockpuppetry too.

[Lucius]

I agree with you on all of these points, trust me, as a campaign manager nothing delights me more than when a bad/robotic poster gets a slap on the wrist and a sig ban since there's no benefit to me at all whether or not a specific user is in or out of my campaign. I can easily find replacements so that's not a concern either.

Wouldn't it behoove you to try to hire better quality posters instead of finding an instant replacement? This would save you time in the long run while also signaling to the community that it pays to be a thoughtful poster. Its a win/win for both you and the forum. As a campaign manager and forum celebrity, you are a primary guard against the influence of spam culture. If you disagree, I'd like to know what it would take to make you want to hire better quality posters.

We have already talked about it, and my proposal was that managers and campaigns would benefit if they changed the way they set up campaigns in general. Instead of the campaign having xx number of participants who will be paid with very low pay rates, but will produce xxx posts of poor or medium quality content - why not halve their number + increase the maximum number of posts and take only the highest quality ones and increase their pay rates and thus further motivate them?

Even if it is true that today's signatures only make sense in that they "spam" links on the forum for the benefit of SEO, I still think that the criteria for sig campaigns should be raised to a higher level - but the real question is what percentage of active posters can be placed in the category of very good or excellent, that is, can they satisfy the needs of all campaigns that are active on the forum at a given moment?

[ChiBitCTy]

Hampz is a dear friend and asked a fair question, my god those on his ass need to F off.  He runs a tight ship and wants quality members (I , even as a very close friend , do not even get leeway if my posts are off count or shit or whatever - not that I post much shit , but to my point.. he runs a tight ship and keeps the forum rules / integrity in mind at all times ).

Nut- a buddy whom I value highly as a member here. Got to know him through Bitcoin fantasy football leagie chats and just seeing him pop up here and there on many boards over past few years  , as far as I’ve always seen- a very solid voice of reason , full of integrity etc etc (reminds me very much of Tman  ).

Theymos is a great admin, who truly cares. He’s trying something new- a test run- so why not get off his fn ass about it and see how it plays out. Good lord people. Fn find a hobby or something

[SuperBitMan]

Was this power given out to a select few members in order to combat spam on your own initiative @theymos or were you approached by someone with a plan and an ask to get this power?

People have been quoting things theymos said 10 years ago like it's scripture.

Whether we like it or not theymos is the admin of this forum and his decision will always stand, you need to understand that in this forum his an authority and what ever he says concerning a situation is a law and an authority that someone can always site when making a point.

However that those not mean all his statements are authority or law, he can still be corrected when he makes a mistake because no body is above mistakes.

Running a big forum like this is actually not easy, if we all can be honest or sincere to ourselves we can all agree that theymos is actually doing a nice job, his always open to peoples opinions and ideas and that is a quality of a good leader.

[nutildah]

Sockpuppetry should also be banned. At the age of LLMs it's kinda easy for someone with an above esversge IQ to operate multiple accounts for profit without much effort.

It should already be banned for most campaigns, and I think it is, its just not actively enforced. The campaign manager can always claim "well, I didn't know". But there are additional signs of a sockpuppet (alt) account that require no special investigation skills, like checking if the account shows signs of a personality or not.

Accounts that 90% of the time are mainly posting neutrally-worded, generic material and don't get merits from more established users are more likely to be alt accounts (admittedly, this could be half the current signature campaign population, or more). Even if they're not alt accounts, it can be generally agreed upon they're not writing much of importance. I'm trying to understand why this behavior should be encouraged on any level on this forum.

There is the goal of wanting to help "genuine users", which is a good goal, but I do not consider alt accounts participating in signature campaigns to be genuine users. Nor would I consider any such account that doesn't contribute much in the way of discussion, or otherwise fits the criteria in the paragraph above.

I can issue sigbans faster than old accounts can wake up and new accounts can rank up, but I'd rather not. It would be better if the campaign managers wanted to work with me to raise the standard for campaign entry. Right now it is way too low.