Just remove signatures already. As in delete, disable, gone.

[Blazed]

I'm kinda sad that people have these opinions. There are quite a few sig ignoring extensions that you can use. Dont be selfish, this is a small source of income for alot of people.

Ignoring the sig is not the issue as stated in this thread 100 times already. The shitty posts are the problem.

[Slark]

I'm kinda sad that people have these opinions. There are quite a few sig ignoring extensions that you can use. Dont be selfish, this is a small source of income for alot of people.

Some people don't understand how things works. They think signatures are root of all evil, but in fact totally the other way around.
For example check out reddit, and see if that forum is free from spam - and, surprise, spam is everywhere and there are no paid signatures there.

[Xian01]

This forum needs the signature campaigns to remain so active.

Therein lies the rub; the signature campaigns arguably degrade signal:noise.

[bitbollo]

maybe who manage a good signature (with high quality post and useful topic for the forums) can get a little help and go better from other signature who pay also for spam topic (bump image off topic and so on)
The signature are a must in a forum... and a good way to earn a couple of bucks to understand how to use bitcoin and related cryptocoin.

[cjmoles]

Well, as a remedy for the sig campaign problems, I suggest we ban everybody below Hero Member from starting new threads, ban anybody who asks less than expert questions from posting on existing threads, ban anybody who points out obvious scams on self moderated threads, and then place a ban on anybody new who attempt to get involved in conversations surrounding the technology.  The fewer bitcoin new members receive, the more bitcoin available to original members.

I think the problem is that too many people are getting interested in the technology.  The conversation and post quality was so much better when the interest was low, the coding was basic, and the markets were easily manipulated.  What we need to do is prevent bitcoin from being adopted by the inexperienced because they make us look stupid with ignorant posts like this one....If only we could find a nice dark warm safe place to stick our bitcoin, the world would be a much better place.

[Blazed]

Well, as a remedy for the sig campaign problems, I suggest we ban everybody below Hero Member from starting new threads, ban anybody who asks less than expert questions from posting on existing threads, ban anybody who points out obvious scams on self moderated threads, and then place a ban on anybody new who attempt to get involved in conversations surrounding the technology.  The fewer bitcoin new members receive, the more bitcoin available to original members.

I think the problem is that too many people are getting interested in the technology.  The conversation and post quality was so much better when the interest was low, the coding was basic, and the markets were easily manipulated.  What we need to do is prevent bitcoin from being adopted by the inexperienced because they make us look stupid with ignorant posts like this one....If only we could find a nice dark warm safe place to stick our bitcoin, the world would be a much better place.

Banning spammers does not hurt Bitcoin it helps it. If a new person to Bitcoin comes here and sees the utterly useless spam posts they will probably think "wow these guys are stupid". I am all for newer people making some coins with campaigns, but they need to at least make decent posts. It is funny how many people will post the same thing in a thread over and over to bump their count. I do not expect everyone to be smart or knowledgeable about Bitcoin, but at least put forth some effort.

[marcotheminer]

This forum needs the signature campaigns to remain so active.

I completely agree and I've said the same thing in the past.

Signature campaigns lead to more ad views which translates into more revenue for theymos. Ban the signature campaigns and views (aswell as posts) will drop (undoubtably by a huge amount) and ad revenue will suffer.

[Lauda]

I completely agree and I've said the same thing in the past.

Signature campaigns lead to more ad views which translates into more revenue for theymos. Ban the signature campaigns and views (aswell as posts) will drop (undoubtably by a huge amount) and ad revenue will suffer.

So the most important thing here is profit? When did this forum become a corporation?
Another alternative, keep signatures and ban signature campaigns with strict punishments if someone does deals in private.

[tmfp]

This forum needs the signature campaigns to remain so active.

I completely agree and I've said the same thing in the past.

Signature campaigns lead to more ad views which translates into more revenue for theymos. Ban the signature campaigns and views (aswell as posts) will drop (undoubtably by a huge amount) and ad revenue will suffer.

And that's 21stC Earth, ruled by the new Holy Trinity of Clicks, Ad Revenue and Zerocontent.
Embrace the horror.

[redsn0w]

I completely agree and I've said the same thing in the past.

Signature campaigns lead to more ad views which translates into more revenue for theymos. Ban the signature campaigns and views (aswell as posts) will drop (undoubtably by a huge amount) and ad revenue will suffer.

So the most important thing here is profit? When did this forum become a corporation?
Another alternative, keep signatures and ban signature campaigns with strict punishments if someone does deals in private.

But marcotheminer has exposed a logical point of view, if a lot of signature campaign will be banned the number of visits and posts will decrease (automatically). However, I don't think the most important thing here is the internal forum ads revenue.

[Lauda]

But marcotheminer has exposed a logical point of view, if a lot of signature campaign will be banned the number of visits and posts will decrease (automatically). However, I don't think the most important thing here is the internal forum ads revenue.

Which is of pretty low importance. The number of anything (most cases) is useless if it is of very low quality. BTCT should be a place of full of excellent discussions, not a place full of random posts. From this viewpoint, the quality of content on BTCT has heavily degraded over time because of various reasons.

[redsn0w]

But marcotheminer has exposed a logical point of view, if a lot of signature campaign will be banned the number of visits and posts will decrease (automatically). However, I don't think the most important thing here is the internal forum ads revenue.

Which is of pretty low importance. The number of anything is useless if it is of very low quality. BTCT should be a place of full of excellent discussions, not a place full of random posts.

I hope the number of useless and spammy will decrease, but without an interview of the admin I don't think the things will change.

From this viewpoint, the quality of content on BTCT has heavily degraded over time because of various reasons.

I agree with you, the sig campaigns are in the first place of the reason list (or at least them are the primary cause).

[minifrij]

Call me biased as I am wearing one, but I don't think a paid signature is really the problem. I see (new) members spamming low quality posts without the use of signatures about as often as I see low quality posts from members wearing a signature ad.
While I am not trying to bash the moderation of this forum at all; all of the staff do a great job keeping the forum clean, I think there should be perhaps some better defined guidelines against what is and isn't a spam post and strict moderation on said posts.
Paid signatures do incentivize spam/low quality posting, but I don't believe that they are the overall root of the problem.

[bad_char5]

Call me biased as I am wearing one, but I don't think a paid signature is really the problem. I see (new) members spamming low quality posts without the use of signatures ...

Account farming. It's a thing.

Paid signatures do incentivize spam/low quality posting, but I don't believe that they are the overall root of the problem.

Nothing is the root of all evil, we have to settle for making things better piecemeal, symptomatically even.
Paid signatures don't disincentivize spam/low quality posting, so let's get rid of them & make this forum a [slightly] better place.
Then we can keep making it better, one step at a time.

[minifrij]

Account farming. It's a thing.

I was just giving an example of when it wasn't due to a signature.

Paid signatures don't disincentivize spam/low quality posting, so let's get rid of them & make this forum a [slightly] better place.

As you said above, account farming is a thing. I'm sure that the sale of accounts would still be around, though likely not as much, even with paid signatures disabled. There would still then be low quality posts from people trying to boost their accounts to sell.
How do we stop account farming? We do what I suggested. We tighten the grip on any low quality post, irrelevant if they have a signature or not. The only way to do this that I can see is create a solid ruleset on what is and isn't allowed in a post and enforce that ruleset strictly. This would be the only way to deincentivize low quality posting.

[Quickseller]

I think the most obvious solution is more transparency as to how much individual campaigns, and individual campaign managers harm the forum. The forum could publish how many posts were deleted every week from people who are participating in individual campaigns (and in campaigns managed by specific campaign managers), the forum could publish how many users are banned (for insubstantial posts + paid signatures, and other reasons) in individual campaigns and in campaigns managed by individual campaign managers.

From the looks of it, the market is engaging in somewhat of self-regulation. For example, the fact that marcotheminer was entrusted by bit-x with 50BTC, and paid out participants with that 50BTC without incident would imply that many others would trust him to manage additional signature campaigns, however this largely has not been the case. On the other hand, carra23, who has essentially zero prior trading history, which would imply that she should not be trusted with large amounts of bitcoin, has been able to do (what I think more of less everyone would agree is) a good job of preventing low quality posters from entering her campaigns, and when low quality posters do get into her campaigns, she does a good job of managing the low quality posts, and as a result she has been able to generate a large amounts of additional business.

[bad_char5]

... We do what I suggested. We tighten the grip on any low quality post, irrelevant if they have a signature or not. The only way to do this that I can see is create a solid ruleset on what is and isn't allowed in a post and enforce that ruleset strictly. This would be the only way to deincentivize low quality posting.

Would be a huge leap forward.
Odd that a community with so many coders, i.e. people who work with and understand closed formal systems, seems set against doing just that. 

[Quickseller]

... We do what I suggested. We tighten the grip on any low quality post, irrelevant if they have a signature or not. The only way to do this that I can see is create a solid ruleset on what is and isn't allowed in a post and enforce that ruleset strictly. This would be the only way to deincentivize low quality posting.

Would be a huge leap forward.
Odd that a community with so many coders, i.e. people who work with and understand closed formal systems, seems set against doing just that. 

The fact that a post is "low quality" or "irrelevant" is very subjective, and human judgment needs to be made to make this determination.

[cjmoles]

Well, as a remedy for the sig campaign problems, I suggest we ban everybody below Hero Member from starting new threads, ban anybody who asks less than expert questions from posting on existing threads, ban anybody who points out obvious scams on self moderated threads, and then place a ban on anybody new who attempt to get involved in conversations surrounding the technology.  The fewer bitcoin new members receive, the more bitcoin available to original members.

I think the problem is that too many people are getting interested in the technology.  The conversation and post quality was so much better when the interest was low, the coding was basic, and the markets were easily manipulated.  What we need to do is prevent bitcoin from being adopted by the inexperienced because they make us look stupid with ignorant posts like this one....If only we could find a nice dark warm safe place to stick our bitcoin, the world would be a much better place.

Banning spammers does not hurt Bitcoin it helps it. If a new person to Bitcoin comes here and sees the utterly useless spam posts they will probably think "wow these guys are stupid". I am all for newer people making some coins with campaigns, but they need to at least make decent posts. It is funny how many people will post the same thing in a thread over and over to bump their count. I do not expect everyone to be smart or knowledgeable about Bitcoin, but at least put forth some effort.

Okay, if more people adopted bitcoin as a payment method, would that help or hurt bitcoin?  New adopters, or new interests, are experimenting with the technology.  They're trying to figure out what the technology has to offer in exchange for their fiat....Why should they trade their hard earned cash for a technology they don't quite understand?  Now, the signature campaigns are, in my opinion, a brilliant idea that promotes distribution of the technology.  We cannot expect those who are new to the realm of bitcoin to put forth a whole lot of effort into a post on a subject they don't quite understand.  They're still trying to figure out why they should trade their hard earned dollar for an invisible alphanumeric number with which they can't even buy a beer.  If we are tolerant, overtime, they will become more knowledgeable and contribute more constructive posts.

On the other hand, if we discourage those who are ignorant of the technology and encourage a more exclusive group of followers, then we're defeating the whole purpose of the technology....it becomes more centralized, becomes more factionist so to speak, more elitist if you will.  Once that happens, the whole experiment is doomed and the volume will start dropping off significantly.

Anyway, once these "garbage posters" get up enough coin to have some skin in the game...they'll realize the value of the technology, their interests will bloom, and their attitudes toward the forum will become more constructive.  And, those who do not become enlightened by the technology will disappear.

[hua_hui]

Well, as a remedy for the sig campaign problems, I suggest we ban everybody below Hero Member from starting new threads, ban anybody who asks less than expert questions from posting on existing threads, ban anybody who points out obvious scams on self moderated threads, and then place a ban on anybody new who attempt to get involved in conversations surrounding the technology.  The fewer bitcoin new members receive, the more bitcoin available to original members.

I think the problem is that too many people are getting interested in the technology.  The conversation and post quality was so much better when the interest was low, the coding was basic, and the markets were easily manipulated.  What we need to do is prevent bitcoin from being adopted by the inexperienced because they make us look stupid with ignorant posts like this one....If only we could find a nice dark warm safe place to stick our bitcoin, the world would be a much better place.

Banning spammers does not hurt Bitcoin it helps it. If a new person to Bitcoin comes here and sees the utterly useless spam posts they will probably think "wow these guys are stupid". I am all for newer people making some coins with campaigns, but they need to at least make decent posts. It is funny how many people will post the same thing in a thread over and over to bump their count. I do not expect everyone to be smart or knowledgeable about Bitcoin, but at least put forth some effort.

Okay, if more people adopted bitcoin as a payment method, would that help or hurt bitcoin?  New adopters, or new interests, are experimenting with the technology.  They're trying to figure out what the technology has to offer in exchange for their fiat....Why should they trade their hard earned cash for a technology they don't quite understand?  Now, the signature campaigns are, in my opinion, a brilliant idea that promotes distribution of the technology.  We cannot expect those who are new to the realm of bitcoin to put forth a whole lot of effort into a post on a subject they don't quite understand.  They're still trying to figure out why they should trade their hard earned dollar for an invisible alphanumeric number with which they can't even buy a beer.  If we are tolerant, overtime, they will become more knowledgeable and contribute more constructive posts.

On the other hand, if we discourage those who are ignorant of the technology and encourage a more exclusive group of followers, then we're defeating the whole purpose of the technology....it becomes more centralized, becomes more factionist so to speak, more elitist if you will.  Once that happens, the whole experiment is doomed and the volume will start dropping off significantly.

Anyway, once these "garbage posters" get up enough coin to have some skin in the game...they'll realize the value of the technology, their interests will bloom, and their attitudes toward the forum will become more constructive.  And, those who do not become enlightened by the technology will disappear.

i totally agree. it is just like the first time i start bitcoin. it is all due to dota 2 trading market that there is some use to it. otherwise i wont even be interested. those ppl after that come in is due to hype and looking for short profit. end up bitcoin take a hit. bitcoin community has been promote business to take up bitcoin as a mode of payment and this idea was really to push for more usage of bitcoin so it can be a reality as a virtual currency. so being here, and with all the diff campagin, you can clearly see that bitcoin is an amazing places where you can use it so easily.