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

[hilariousandco]

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?

There's no doubt that signature campaigns bring a vast amount of traffic and activity to this site but it shouldn't be at the expense of the overall quality of the forum which is drastically degraded because of a couple of campaigns not doing anything to curb spam and paying newbs to shitpost daily without any consequence. There's at least a hundred users on yobit and secondstrade that could do with a weeks ban or more until they get the message (not to mention the campaigns themselves). These problem campaigns and users on them shouldn't be allowed to continue the way they are currently without punishments. If every campaign only accepted decent posters and didn't pay shitposters spammers would have no where to go and be forced to improve their posts if they want to earn. Many of the higher paying campaigns already do this but it's futile when spammers just get rejected when they know they will be accepted by yobit or secondstrade regardless of how shitty their posts are. If every campaign only paid decent posters the forum would clean itself up of sigspam naturally but this isn't going to happen without the co-operation of all the campaigns and if the problem ones don't clean up their act they should be forced to either with bans or blocking their signatures all together.

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.

As others have mentioned they could be farmers but it's naive to think that signatures aren't a massive problem. Yes, people without signatures might make shitty posts and there will always be spammers on any forum but when those users without signatures join a campaign they're encouraged to make many more shitty posts and the problem here is there are campaigns that pay for them and it's those campaigns that need to be dealt with as the problem gets worse everyday when nothing is done about it. I agree more action needs to be taken by staff too but the admins have better and more important issues to handle than dealing with the massive amount of spammers especially when it should be the campaigns themselves that are doing the moderating on these matters.

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.

I imagine it would be very difficult if not impossible to collect this sort of data but we can see it's a lot. Just take a look in the spammy off topic threads & giveaways in Games and Rounds and you'll see massive amounts of yobit and secondstrade signatures making one/two/three word posts or half-assed sentences at the most.

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.

Cara actively seeks new campaigns out and pesters existing business on here to start them so that's why he is running a lot. Marco is fully employed by bit-x it seems so he probably doesn't have time nor actively seeks out new business.

If we are tolerant, overtime, they will become more knowledgeable and contribute more constructive posts.

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.

This is quite a naive assumption and the problem here is we have been tolerant of spam and spammy campaigns for far too long. People can learn about bitcoin and earn at the same time but that's almost certainly not what is happening with half the people on these spammy campaigns. These garbage posters are greedy and lazy and wont stop at any amount. They keep making garbage posts that get worse day after day because they know they can get paid for them. Why bother even writing a half-assed sentence when you can just make posts like these and get paid for them:

beer, and i love all kind of tea

Coindesk and youtube mainly

ali-g   

of course no.

peach tea

+15 more today.

Are you telling me he should be allowed to make and get paid for those posts? What's he learning about bitcoin there when all of his posts are in off-topic? He does the same thing 20 times a day because his campaign only pays for 20 posts and users like him are the vast majority on yobit and secondstrade. If you check out his profile you will also see he has been marked as a scammer by several people and is showing up red and most campaigns wont accept such users but yobit will at a discounted rate because they don't care who advertises for them as long as they do and their advert is plastered everywhere and that's why something needs to be done about them because they have absolutely no interest in this forum other than to make money and they don't care what damage they do in the process.

[yolalanda]

... 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.

And that's why IRL we don't have laws prohibiting "bad things" or "things that are wrong."
"We should!" you say, "Why don't we?"
Well, because rules that poorly defined (open to interpretation) are junk rules, making a ruleset containing them a junk ruleset.
Let's try to create a set of rules that are not junk.

[Lauda]

There's no doubt that signature campaigns bring a vast amount of traffic and activity to this site but it shouldn't be at the expense of the overall quality of the forum which is drastically degraded because of a couple of campaigns not doing anything to curb spam and paying newbs to shitpost daily without any consequence. There's at least a hundred users on yobit and secondstrade that could do with a weeks ban or more until they get the message (not to mention the campaigns themselves). These problem campaigns and users on them shouldn't be allowed to continue the way they are currently without punishments. If every campaign only accepted decent posters and didn't pay shitposters spammers would have no where to go and be forced to improve their posts if they want to earn. Many of the higher paying campaigns already do this but it's futile when spammers just get rejected when they know they will be accepted by yobit or secondstrade regardless of how shitty their posts are. If every campaign only paid decent posters the forum would clean itself up of sigspam naturally but this isn't going to happen without the co-operation of all the campaigns and if the problem ones don't clean up their act they should be forced to either with bans or blocking their signatures all together.

Correct. That's why I said that removing signatures completely should be the very last options as it harms the good people because of the actions of the bad. There are a LOT of users like the one that you quoted in this particular post. I'm all ears for solutions as this occasionally bothers me. I'm having a really difficult time finding good discussions lately. There are people that are even arguing whether this is completely correct which is beyond me. Constructive posts are not that subjective and it is easy to spot the difference between a constructive and useless post (by comparing with a high quality poster).
My support for punishing campaign managers (or the service itself, i.e. their campaign is not allowed at all) is slowly increasing.

[Holliday]

And that's why IRL we don't have laws prohibiting "bad things" or "things that are wrong."

You must live in a different IRL than me.

Or am I not seeing the sarcasm tag?

[minifrij]

I would perhaps suggest sort of an affiliate banning system. For example, whenever someone on a certain campaign gets banned for spam posts then the campaign manager gains a point. Every 7 points or so is a weeks ban for the campaign manager. However, there would be a few problems with this. The first being that it would probably be a huge pain for the mods to keep up with. The second is that, if the campaign managers are using a bot to count posts, what difference would it make to them if they were banned or not? The bot could be banned, but that would be ruining it for everyone.

Another way to combat would be to perhaps prohibit campaign managers from paying for posts in Off Topic and Games and Rounds. If this were the case there would be little incentive for a lot of users to post said spam in said sections, and spam in the other sections could be handled accordingly by staff members. However, it would then be the problem of enforcing this rule. We could ban the campaign managers but that once again links with the second downside of my first suggestion.

As others have mentioned they could be farmers but it's naive to think that signatures aren't a massive problem.

I agree that signatures are a massive problem, however people seem to be acting like it is the root of the entire problem (the title of this thread as a great example). I tried to make the point of, while signatures are a massive part of the problem, it isn't the whole problem.

I agree more action needs to be taken by staff too but the admins have better and more important issues to handle than dealing with the massive amount of spammers especially when it should be the campaigns themselves that are doing the moderating on these matters.

I appreciate that completely. Perhaps, if needed, there could be more Global Moderators/Staff members promoted to help handle said spam and temporary bans to take the pressure off the administrators. I can certainly think of some potential candidates who would be good for the job, there are likely more that I am missing.
Even if not permanent, there should definitely be action taken against users who repeatedly offend. In the example user you posted, perhaps deleting the posts and a PM warning would be sufficient. If the user would continue to offend a temp ban, followed by a nuke if they still refuse to comply. I understand that this is more work for staff members, but without staff intervention very little can be done against this problem.

Constructive posts are not that subjective and it is easy to spot the difference between a constructive and useless post (by comparing with a high quality poster).

Even if it isn't that subjective of a matter for the majority of these posts, a line should still be drawn out as to what is and isn't. I can make a long post saying exactly the same as what has already said in a thread before, does that make it constructive or not?

You must live in a different IRL than me.

Or am I not seeing the sarcasm tag?

I think he means that there are not laws as general as that. Instead of "Don't do bad things" it's "Don't steal" or "Don't harm others". I believe that this is how it should be on this forum, which it already is to an extent.

[hilariousandco]

I would perhaps suggest sort of an affiliate banning system. For example, whenever someone on a certain campaign gets banned for spam posts then the campaign manager gains a point. Every 7 points or so is a weeks ban for the campaign manager. However, there would be a few problems with this. The first being that it would probably be a huge pain for the mods to keep up with. The second is that, if the campaign managers are using a bot to count posts, what difference would it make to them if they were banned or not? The bot could be banned, but that would be ruining it for everyone.

That would be too much work and unnecessary. We can all see which campaigns are the problem here without a points system. You're right that banning them wont stop them from paying out but it will be a big blow to them and their business if their main account is banned and most will probably just change their ways rather than have their account permabanned, but this is why I suggest some sort of tool for mods to either blanket ban an entire campaign's signature or the ability to remove a certain users signature. Bans already remove signatures and profile info so the ability to just remove a users signature shouldn't be too difficult though maybe just issuing more bans will be enough as if the signature isn't there then they wont get paid.

Another way to combat would be to perhaps prohibit campaign managers from paying for posts in Off Topic and Games and Rounds. If this were the case there would be little incentive for a lot of users to post said spam in said sections, and spam in the other sections could be handled accordingly by staff members. However, it would then be the problem of enforcing this rule. We could ban the campaign managers but that once again links with the second downside of my first suggestion.

Hard/almost impossible to enforce. Besides, many campaigns already don't pay or include those subs but some people can make constructive posts in off topic anyway but it's the ones that don't that should be punished. Also, the people that spam in off topic would just start spamming in other sections where they're not prohibited so it's the shitposters that you need to deal with not where they can post.

As others have mentioned they could be farmers but it's naive to think that signatures aren't a massive problem.

I agree that signatures are a massive problem, however people seem to be acting like it is the root of the entire problem (the title of this thread as a great example). I tried to make the point of, while signatures are a massive part of the problem, it isn't the whole problem.

It's the root of all sigspam but not all spam. It might not get rid of spam 100% but we all know that if signatures were banned completely there would be at least 50% less spam and a noticeable drop in drivel. Obviously there are many ways to try deal with it but for some the easiest solution is to just ban campaigns and they're not exactly wrong though as you said wouldn't get rid of it all but it'd be a simple and quick improvement..

I agree more action needs to be taken by staff too but the admins have better and more important issues to handle than dealing with the massive amount of spammers especially when it should be the campaigns themselves that are doing the moderating on these matters.

I appreciate that completely. Perhaps, if needed, there could be more Global Moderators/Staff members promoted to help handle said spam and temporary bans to take the pressure off the administrators. I can certainly think of some potential candidates who would be good for the job, there are likely more that I am missing.
Even if not permanent, there should definitely be action taken against users who repeatedly offend. In the example user you posted, perhaps deleting the posts and a PM warning would be sufficient. If the user would continue to offend a temp ban, followed by a nuke if they still refuse to comply. I understand that this is more work for staff members, but without staff intervention very little can be done against this problem.

I've offered to step up if they want a specific mod to deal with signature spammers and bans relating to them but currently only admins can temp ban people though I'm sure theymos could change the code to give Globals or certain other staff the ability to do so. I think that would help a lot as without a lot of people getting temp banned there's no reason for them to change their ways but most usually get the message after their first ban.

[cjmoles]

... 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.

Yes! (+1.5) Thank you for that point.  Who would get to decide what's "low quality" or "irrelevant?"  Would BTC core supporters get to decide or BTC XT supporters?  And, whose opinion will get more weight in that matter?  It just opens up doors that should remain closed in a decentralized sort of environment.....Right?

[cjmoles]

If we are tolerant, overtime, they will become more knowledgeable and contribute more constructive posts.

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.

This is quite a naive assumption and the problem here is we have been tolerant of spam and spammy campaigns for far too long. People can learn about bitcoin and earn at the same time but that's almost certainly not what is happening with half the people on these spammy campaigns. These garbage posters are greedy and lazy and wont stop at any amount. They keep making garbage posts that get worse day after day because they know they can get paid for them. Why bother even writing a half-assed sentence when you can just make posts like these and get paid for them:

beer, and i love all kind of tea

Coindesk and youtube mainly

ali-g   

of course no.

peach tea

+15 more today.

Are you telling me he should be allowed to make and get paid for those posts? What's he learning about bitcoin there when all of his posts are in off-topic? He does the same thing 20 times a day because his campaign only pays for 20 posts and users like him are the vast majority on yobit and secondstrade. If you check out his profile you will also see he has been marked as a scammer by several people and is showing up red and most campaigns wont accept such users but yobit will at a discounted rate because they don't care who advertises for them as long as they do and their advert is plastered everywhere and that's why something needs to be done about them because they have absolutely no interest in this forum other than to make money and they don't care what damage they do in the process.


[/quote]

Here's my reasoning:  Most readers will pass right over those type of posts and not even pay attention to the signatures included within them; therefore, those who are running the signature campaigns will be injecting money into the blochchain for ineffective advertising, and if they were smart enough, they would fix their leak by removing them from their campaign.  (Free market sorta philosophy.)

If I were to run a signature campaign....I would have a pay schedule based on merit and not quantity, where more constructive posts get paid more money.

[Magnesium Coin]

No! Not at all!

If adding signatures are banned in this forum, or as soon as this announcement is made, the forum will start crippling on it's own.

Care to know why OP?

Because, all online companies/interns are mainly based on ads and if ads are disabled, there will not be a single traffic in this forum except admins, mods and some signature haters like you... YES! MARK MY WORDS.

Then google wouldn't have shown any ads on their pages.

So a possible solution for you:

• Try this script > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1003570.0

• Check DannyHamilton's Ignore List and ignore everyone who's using signatures > (latest list till now) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=973843.msg12458412#msg12458412

Well, you can ignore me too since I'm using a paid signature and I won't care about it too.

Good luck with your ignoring spree and FYI, signatures will stay in this forum FOREVER.

Just check out the number of impressions every ad gets each round > https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

[minifrij]

Because, all online companies/interns are mainly based on ads and if ads are disabled, there will not be a single traffic in this forum except admins, mods and some signature haters like you... YES! MARK MY WORDS.

Yeah, no. I know that I would likely still be around (along with a lot of other members) should signature campaigns be banned. I am just using this as a means of getting some pocket money, same as (I expect) a decent amount of other members.

• Try this script > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1003570.0

That doesn't help anything, as the post quality would still remain the same shit regardless of if you could see the signatures or not.

Good luck with your ignoring spree and FYI, signatures will stay in this forum FOREVER.

I wouldn't be so sure; if things carry on as they do now the spam from worthless members would become so large the forum would likely have no option but to ban paid signatures.

Just check out the number of impressions every ad gets each round > https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Those statistics are for the ads placed on the forum (below the first post of each thread/page), not signature advertisements. At least do your research before trying to act smart.

[Magnesium Coin]

Those statistics are for the ads placed on the forum (below the first post of each thread/page), not signature advertisements. At least do your research before trying to act smart.

Yes! I'm fully aware of that fact. I just didn't mention that on my previous post itself. It's just an instance to show OP how much traction can an ad get from this forum.

[tspacepilot]

Because, all online companies/interns are mainly based on ads and if ads are disabled, there will not be a single traffic in this forum except admins, mods and some signature haters like you... YES! MARK MY WORDS.

There's a logical fallacy here.  You say that "all online companies/interns are mainly based on ads", which I take to mean that online companies rely on ads for promoting their business.  Then you suggest that this leads to "if ads are disabled, there will not be a single traffic in this forum except ...".   But it's hard to see how this follows.  You seem to have put the cart before the horse, so to speak.  People don't come to this forum in order to view the ads.  People come to this forum in order to discuss bitcoin topics.  People place ads in this forum because there are people here discussing bitcoin topics.  If the ads go away, that doesn't suggest that the people will not continue to discuss bitcoin topics.  In fact, it's the other way around.  If people stop coming here to discuss bitcoin topics (for whatever reason), then surely advertizers will no longer be interested in posting ads here (as there would be no one looking at them).

[Lauda]

There's a logical fallacy here.  You say that "all online companies/interns are mainly based on ads", which I take to mean that online companies rely on ads for promoting their business.  Then you suggest that this leads to "if ads are disabled, there will not be a single traffic in this forum except ...".   But it's hard to see how this follows.  You seem to have put the cart before the horse, so to speak.  People don't come to this forum in order to view the ads.  People come to this forum in order to discuss bitcoin topics.  People place ads in this forum because there are people here discussing bitcoin topics.  If the ads go away, that doesn't suggest that the people will not continue to discuss bitcoin topics.  In fact, it's the other way around.  If people stop coming here to discuss bitcoin topics (for whatever reason), then surely advertizers will no longer be interested in posting ads here (as there would be no one looking at them).

I concur. I don't understand how someone could have come up with the other conclusion? If we were to disable signature campaigns (not signatures in general), i.e. make them against the rules, that would not reduce the forum traffic but rather the amount of posts (mostly posts that are useless anyways). In the end, this would have a positive effect on the forum in general (quality over quantity). I also do not think that it would have a negative impact on the forum's ad revenue (it might have a slight one). It could actually go the other way around as there would be no other way of advertising your company/service.

[mexxer-2]

Because, all online companies/interns are mainly based on ads and if ads are disabled, there will not be a single traffic in this forum except admins, mods and some signature haters like you... YES! MARK MY WORDS.

There's a logical fallacy here.  You say that "all online companies/interns are mainly based on ads", which I take to mean that online companies rely on ads for promoting their business.  Then you suggest that this leads to "if ads are disabled, there will not be a single traffic in this forum except ...".   But it's hard to see how this follows.  You seem to have put the cart before the horse, so to speak.  People don't come to this forum in order to view the ads.  People come to this forum in order to discuss bitcoin topics.  People place ads in this forum because there are people here discussing bitcoin topics.  If the ads go away, that doesn't suggest that the people will not continue to discuss bitcoin topics.  In fact, it's the other way around.  If people stop coming here to discuss bitcoin topics (for whatever reason), then surely advertizers will no longer be interested in posting ads here (as there would be no one looking at them).

Well I don't essentially agree with Magnesium but I disagree that it would have a positive impact on forum traffic or on ad revenues.
This is a circle IMHO:
1) Signatures ads start coming up
2) People start joining signature camps
3) More people join the forum for signature campaigns
4) Sites see that there is a wide audience in Bitcointalk, and we go to 1st step again
I still don't get however , why do sites choose forum ads over signatures, sigs are more visible than forum as, more cost effective and so on

[Xialla]

I don't care anymore since I'm using DannyHamilton's anti-signare whore list..

btw this is how it looks like on some part on forum (where whores are "encouraged" to post by signature managers)

[Athertle]

I don't care anymore since I'm using DannyHamilton's anti-signare whore list..

-snip-

Good for you.

I still don't get however , why do sites choose forum ads over signatures, sigs are more visible than forum as, more cost effective and so on

I can't speak for the forum, but I personally have begun to ignore signature ads. I just skim over them. Forum ads looker cooler (since they can use things other than BBCode, IIRC), too. I've clicked forum ads more often than signature ads.

[cellard]

Signature campaigns are doing god's work in spreading Bitcoin to the average joe. If you remove them, you will remove a source of spreading this Bitcoin around. Also, I have noticed that a lot of people (me included) is a lot more prone to not simply hoard your Bitcoin indefinitely, but to use it as an actual currency and purchase goods and services with it, if you get paid directly on it. When you have to buy Bitcoin with your fiat, you don't feel like spending it. There's something psychological about it, it feels like buying Gold, then using this Gold to buy something mundane.. not worth the effort of converting your fiat for that when you can directly buy with your fiat. In fact it's pretty stupid.

OTOH, if you get paid on BTC directly, it's way more convenient to use it in a shop that's accepting BTC, and right now, sig campaigns are the most immediate way to get them. So you are also not only killing a way for common people to make some beerBTC on the side, but a big part of this BTC potentially going into merchant's hands.

[tspacepilot]

Signature campaigns are doing god's work in spreading Bitcoin to the average joe.

That's not so clear.  Anyone who sees a signature ad is already on the forum, which seems to mean that they've already heard of bitcoin.

If you remove them, you will remove a source of spreading this Bitcoin around. Also, I have noticed that a lot of people (me included) is a lot more prone to not simply hoard your Bitcoin indefinitely, but to use it as an actual currency and purchase goods and services with it, if you get paid directly on it.

Here I agree with you.  The sig ads not only promote services (ie, spreading awareness of ways to use your bitcoin), but as you say, by providing a little bitcoin that you didn't spend fiat to get, I find I'm more likely to spend it back into the bitcoin economy.

[Decoded]

I suggest a) remove all signatures b) reduce the interval between posts for newbies because waiting sucks. 6 minutes is too long. Make it 1 minute instead.

In the meantime you can disable signatures in your profile under 'look and layout preferences' > 'Don't show users' signatures.' BTW this option is probably going to be used to justify keeping signatures around. "Why you can disable it if you don't like it" they will say.

This is to stop spam bots spamming all the shit they can before getting nuked. With the six minute restriction, admins have six minutes to react.

It also usually takes me more than six minutes to read through an OP and read some responses and come to with a response of my own, so I don't see why a newbie would need to pay more than 6 times in a minute.

[Decoded]

Signature campaigns are an easy way of getting money to the "newbies" of the forum, who didn't buy bitcoin when they were -$20 a piece.

Signature campaigns are doing god's work in spreading Bitcoin to the average joe. If you remove them, you will remove a source of spreading this Bitcoin around. Also, I have noticed that a lot of people (me included) is a lot more prone to not simply hoard your Bitcoin indefinitely, but to use it as an actual currency and purchase goods and services with it, if you get paid directly on it. When you have to buy Bitcoin with your fiat, you don't feel like spending it. There's something psychological about it, it feels like buying Gold, then using this Gold to buy something mundane.. not worth the effort of converting your fiat for that when you can directly buy with your fiat. In fact it's pretty stupid.

OTOH, if you get paid on BTC directly, it's way more convenient to use it in a shop that's accepting BTC, and right now, sig campaigns are the most immediate way to get them. So you are also not only killing a way for common people to make some beerBTC on the side, but a big part of this BTC potentially going into merchant's hands.

I don't see how signature campaigns are spreading bitcoin. Signature campaigns are on bitcointalk, a forum where everyone has already been told about bitcoin.