I said I'd write a few words when I collect my thoughts a bit, so here goes.. Roast me

Sigbans are the latest hot topic - but overall, it's a continuous discussion about spam.
It's run rampant for a while, Gambling is probably most affected by it, considering I spend a lot of time there I'd like to toss a few alternative ideas for consideration.
Before I do that, I'd like to make some things clear so that they are not susceptible to interpretations:
- Everything I'm about to write is mostly about Gambling boards. I don't know what the situation is like elsewhere.
- I support bans, sigbans, account nukes - basically every legitimate action against users that are here just to leech, scam or benefit only themselves
- I don't support evaluating posts/users based on merits received, posting patterns or an individual feeling about a certain post's meaningfulness in a certain thread
- I do think we should not hide from the fact that writing posts on BTT is a job. Many senior users oppose the idea, yet many opened accounts on Altcointalks and started writing there as soon as it started getting paid
- I think we should strive to bring businesses to BTT and respect the work of those that work with clients. That being said, I think that, as a community, we are too lenient with some managers and that we can collectively do better
Ok, let's go to some suggestions on how to improve the situation:
1. Create a 'Paid pools' child board within GamblingPaid pools are the fuel of the Gambling boards. They help create a circular economy in which users pay to play, have fun and promote the business through interesting and organic conversations.
Separating these threads from the rest of the gambling boards would bring more visibility to them, be easier to find for potential sponsors, would help streamline conversations and make it easier for managers to check if their signature campaign wearers contribute in these conversations that are organic in nature.
I'd like to make these threads more visible, more relevant and nudge more people towards participating in them.
As a campaign manager looking to hire a member predominantly from the Gambling boards, there is where I'd look for members.
Hopefully, it would give these members a certain level of protections from sigbans - last member I saw getting banned is Strongkored, for a whole year, and from memory he participates in a lot of paid pools.
I'm not saying that paying for a pool should give you full protection, just that paid pools often have what you'd call 'low quality' posts if you look at them from the outside. It's banter, but it's organic and should not be punished. Believe me, these are the posts that are being read more often than a post of better quality in one of the threads opened specifically to fulfill quotas.
How does it tackle spam?Logic says that people will either join organic conversations or remain in the other parts of the Gambling boards in which their posts carry less weight, are less relevant and will be easier to filter as spam.
2. Give the sigban power to the DT1 (DT2?) communityInstead of us depending just on nutildah's judgment, why not have our own? There's already a 'report to moderator' tool available to us all. I think the first users on the sigban lists should be the ones whose posts are often reported and deleted and I think we should have a process that does it automatically. We can implement a simple formula that gives a bit of power and meaning to DT1 (and maybe DT2) users that says something like - if 5% of your posts in the last 30 days are successfully reported by multiple DT1 members, you automatically receive a 1-month sigban. Repeated offences increase the length of future bans.
People generally stopped reporting bad/repeating posts because many remained unhandled. This would probably require either more mods or some sort of responsibility rebalancing - but if we would use the whole DT1 as a gauge of what kind of content we want to see, it would carry more weight than a voice of a single person does. I'm not saying nutildah should be fully stripped of his duties - there were some things that I disagreed with and still disagree with but I will also be the first one to admit that some progress was achieved after the sigbans started. We do have to realize though that the spam reduced because most of banned users were not replaced - if they were, the situation would probably be as bad as it was before the bans started.
How does it tackle spam?The most trusted part of the community flags the content they do not wish to see. Moderators evaluate it and the users that spammed the forum are sigbanned automatically.
This would also give the community a sense of purpose, meaningfulness and a desire to work towards making this place better.
3. Demand more from campaign managersIt is tough to get a client, sell him the idea and keep him happy. Considering it's basically a job - we all want to earn as much as possible from it.
That being said, the criteria of some managers has dropped a lot (or was always low - not really sure). I'm not here to point fingers or name names, but simply to say that I'd like to see more effort from all of us while we conduct business on Bitcointalk.
Primarily I'm talking about short-term (often unescrowed) sig campaigns that have literally no value for the client, for the forum or for anybody other than the manager taking the fee. There should be a way to hold us to higher standards and to easily see in what standing the managers currently are. We can't use Trust ratings - for campaign managers they are skewed, often openly asked for and given in hope that the members that gave them will get another sig gig down the road.
A few ideas on 'how to demand more':
- Have an overview of the campaigns that create the most spam (and have the most users sigbanned/most posts successfully reported as spam)
- Block a spot in the campaign for a certain period (2-4 weeks) from which a user was sigbanned, make it visible
- Have an 'average campaign duration' or a similar metric for managers
- (Briefly) sigban companies whose campaigns are badly managed, nudging them to change campaign managers
How does it tackle spam?Low paying test campaigns are responsible for a lot of spam, and what's even worse - these companies often don't know that they are paying money to be a net negative for the forum. By taking a more holistic approach and by building a longer-term relationship with the clients the campaigns would attract better members and we'd also avoid a lot of scams that are looking for a quick money grab by running short-term sig campaigns.
4. Reward the cleanest campaignsLet's consider 'taxing' every sig campaign by a small amount, something totally negligible - 1-2% of total budget, up to 200$ max monthly. We keep it escrowed, at the end of the month we statistically evaluate what the cleanest campaign was and we simply pay that money to all members of that campaign equally.
For companies it would be a really small fee and they would not mind and it would hopefully create a willingness to write better for everyone involved. It would create a financial incentive, and there'd be a list of the best performing campaigns for a quick overview of the managers' work as well.
It would also give members of smaller (or newer) campaigns a great incentive to do well for that company - if it is a small campaign, the potential financial benefit is quite big.
How does it tackle spam?Ideally, by default. People are competitive in nature, if you give them incentive most will strive to do better.
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For now, all of these are broad ideas without actual numbers, without the data to back them up, without the needed safeguards in place to stop manipulations/actions done in bad faith.
Consider them as opening discussion points, and if the community likes them and we get the proper backing then we can all work towards making these more robust and more concrete before implementation.
What I would like to see is #1 being implemented as soon as possible and #2 to be seriously considered in the near future.Ideally, we'd collectively work towards #3 not being needed at all and #4 is a cherry on top that I feel has the power to connect the community - but is definitely not mandatory at this point in time.
All that is written revolves around the concept of a community working together to achieve common goals - a thriving community that attracts business and ultimately has a strong base of happy, long-term clients.
I think the majority of these ideas would be easy to implement and would improve the situation regarding spam.
I'm all ears
