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

[superresistant]

You can choose to disable signature but of course you might not see important information. I think most of the signature (campaigns) require strict constructive post rule, those spammers are reduced this way.

I have seen people apparently faking constructive posts by copy&pasting earlier thread comments (with minor edits).
The ignore button works well, but requires you to be logged in. It is also tricky when an actually constructive poster decides to participate in a signature campaign. Most the time, I just hope anything important gets quoted by another poster. I probably have 3-5 people I don't have on ignore despite their signature campaign participation.

Are you ignoring all the people with a paid signature ?
That must be a hell lot of people.

[1713278086]

1713278086

[1713278086]

1713278086

[BombaUcigasa]

Are you ignoring all the people with a paid signature ?
That must be a hell lot of people.

I do. My life is substantially better and I feel great. My sex life has also improved and I can bench press a midget sized small person.

[peligro]

I would prefer signatures to remain. The 0.05-0.1 BTC I make a month is quite a nice amount for me.

I see the other side too, and I understand the problems. I ran a campaign for sometime and was rejecting almost all applicants as a quick glance through their posting history showed they were alternate accounts and only here to participate in signature campaigns.

For instance, a couple of days back this account made over 50 posts, collected his gawminer signature campaign payout and left. That account will get activated once or twice again in the next month. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=168724

The solution would be to make campaign managers liable if their participants are spamming just to get to the required posts. The above example would have been easily caught if the manager was even a little bit proactive. The minimum posting threshold may also be lowered. My current one asks for 40 posts a month (I do a lot more than that).

[EvilPanda]

For instance, a couple of days back this account made over 50 posts, collected his gawminer signature campaign payout and left. That account will get activated once or twice again in the next month. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=168724

The solution would be to make campaign managers liable if their participants are spamming just to get to the required posts. The above example would have been easily caught if the manager was even a little bit proactive. The minimum posting threshold may also be lowered. My current one asks for 40 posts a month (I do a lot more than that).

This forum allows users to have multiple accounts, so why shouldn't the campaign? The forum member played it by the rules, he wrote 50 posts before the deadline, and they were on topic, so there's no reason to remove him.
 
If you think a campaign member is spamming or flaming, you have a lot of options available:
-contact me, and I'll review his account
-give him negative trust
-report his posts and ask a moderator to ban him

P.S. The reason you now have campaigns with 40 post limit is because they want to look attractive for people who are already in the 50 p. campaigns, not because they want to fight spam or anything like that

[tspacepilot]

Is there ever actually going to be new forum software?  This is something I've been hearing about for over 2 years but as far as I know there's still no timeline for implementation.

[hilariousandco]

It's been penciled in roughly for early next year for quite some time, though there's no exact date.

[peligro]

For instance, a couple of days back this account made over 50 posts, collected his gawminer signature campaign payout and left. That account will get activated once or twice again in the next month. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=168724

The solution would be to make campaign managers liable if their participants are spamming just to get to the required posts. The above example would have been easily caught if the manager was even a little bit proactive. The minimum posting threshold may also be lowered. My current one asks for 40 posts a month (I do a lot more than that).

This forum allows users to have multiple accounts, so why shouldn't the campaign? The forum member played it by the rules, he wrote 50 posts before the deadline, and they were on topic, so there's no reason to remove him.
 
If you think a campaign member is spamming or flaming, you have a lot of options available:
-contact me, and I'll review his account
-give him negative trust
-report his posts and ask a moderator to ban him

P.S. The reason you now have campaigns with 40 post limit is because they want to look attractive for people who are already in the 50 p. campaigns, not because they want to fight spam or anything like that

Posts should be if they need to say something. If your participants are posting 50+ posts one day per month then clearly they are doing just to collect the pay and not because they needed to say something. Another example is here https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=162745

There are also sign ups with bought accounts. The forum policy allows account trading only because its not possible to stop, and the market exists mainly due to signature campaigns. Look at this participant https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=59502

This one's ownership is still dubious https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=840008.0

[Mowcore]

I will admit , I used to have a sig for dice website. I felt bad for promoting a gambling website and decided to promote a charity instead.

Buy games people, we all love em and people benefit from it....cough cough my sig cough.

[Lethn]

I have a sig, it earns me a fairly stable income which I am then converting into an even more stable income which means I won't even have to rely on sig ads at one point. However, I always try my best not to spam and don't bump if I can help it and definitely don't necro post I do agree though that I've had to check the date a lot lately of any topics and sure enough I often find a topic that I posted in sometimes a year ago that's been deliberately necro'd for a post count.

Just report these twats and in fact, report any senior members that go along with it and try to sneakily reply to the topic as if nothing happened and yes, I HAVE noticed, so don't think your safe because you're a long term member.

Signature campaign managers should also take steps to make sure to be more vigilant and check the post history of any members that sign up to their campaign to make sure they aren't just spamming for post count, if you cut off their incentive to spam the majority of them will stop.

I've noticed now too the necro spammers more recently have been targeting threads within the past couple of months so keep a watch for that sort of thing as well.

[marcotheminer]

I have a sig, it earns me a fairly stable income which I am then converting into an even more stable income which means I won't even have to rely on sig ads at one point. However, I always try my best not to spam and don't bump if I can help it and definitely don't necro post I do agree though that I've had to check the date a lot lately of any topics and sure enough I often find a topic that I posted in sometimes a year ago that's been deliberately necro'd for a post count.

Just report these twats and in fact, report any senior members that go along with it and try to sneakily reply to the topic as if nothing happened and yes, I HAVE noticed, so don't think your safe because you're a long term member.

Signature campaign managers should also take steps to make sure to be more vigilant and check the post history of any members that sign up to their campaign to make sure they aren't just spamming for post count, if you cut off their incentive to spam the majority of them will stop.

I've noticed now too the necro spammers more recently have been targeting threads within the past couple of months so keep a watch for that sort of thing as well.

Lethn for president!
Please forgive me hehe

Serious note: As a campaign manager, I will do my best to watch out for certain kinds of users.

[Blazed]

While I do participate in these campaigns since I post a lot...I would not mind them being ended either. I am always buying and selling things so why not get paid while I post anyways? I do hate when I see people posting just to be paid (always very obvious).  Seems Prime Dice is about to start a large campaign again...will be interesting if they can keep the spam under control having forum staff running it. Since PD has stopped their campaign I have noticed quite a reduction in spam since most of the current ones pay for a set amount.

[Fernandez]

Since PD has stopped their campaign I have noticed quite a reduction in spam since most of the current ones pay for a set amount.

It has increased now with the payments based on posts campaigns.

The activity and signature limit worked well to curb this for a few months. Its time Theymos did another scaling or adding new restrictions. Personally, I would prefer activity based on powers of 2, like in bit/byte/kB etc. Its a Bitcoin forum, so makes sense to count in bits.

[Danydee]

What about the free market then? The ways to advertise are really limited in the bitcoin world, so people are using signatures to promote.
"Gambling is bad so don't allow gambling signatures" and I say: don't like it - don't click it! You can always hide signatures in your settings.

Signatures work like faucets and allow people to get some coins. Ask some newbies if they would like the signatures to be removed. Don't be selfish, not all of you are old members who could mine BTC on PC's.

maybe be best if the users were able to pickup on a larger choice of advertisements,  but I think is that is doesn't specific to the question right now.

[Wardrick]

The best thing that can be done is to encourage signature campaigns to raise their standards for posting requirements in order to qualify to receive payment at the end of each payment cycle. People exhibiting mindless posting consistently should be barred from the signature campaign. The difficult part is getting the signature campaigns to accept partial liability for the constant spam around the forum. I don't think it will ever be changed because for one it increases the sites traffic and activity, and secondly the majority of signature campaigns will never agree to raise their posting standards because it would limit the amount of exposure for their business/advertisements.

[tspacepilot]

Since PD has stopped their campaign I have noticed quite a reduction in spam since most of the current ones pay for a set amount.

It has increased now with the payments based on posts campaigns.

The activity and signature limit worked well to curb this for a few months. Its time Theymos did another scaling or adding new restrictions. Personally, I would prefer activity based on powers of 2, like in bit/byte/kB etc. Its a Bitcoin forum, so makes sense to count in bits.

Power's of 2 rankings would be cute.  But fwiw, most people count bitcoins in decimal.

[DooMAD]

Removing signatures wouldn't necessarily stop paid advertising campaigns anyway.  The irony is, much like Bitcoin itself, there's nothing you can actually do to ban it outright.  If you disable signatures, which have set limits on the BB code that can be used, people would just start pasting the relevant advertising code directly into their posts, where there's no restriction on the BB code that can be used.  You'd have brand new accounts posting in giant 72px fonts in a various array of colours.  How about some flashing animated gifs for good measure?  Any semblance of legibility in threads would be decimated.  Be careful what you wish for, regulation and banning doesn't work anymore, this is Bitcoin we're talking about.  

Secondary point, have you looked at comments on a youtube video lately?  People don't have to be paid to post stupid shit on the internet.  They spew it freely and in large quantities.

[Fernandez]

Removing signatures wouldn't necessarily stop paid advertising campaigns anyway.  The irony is, much like Bitcoin itself, there's nothing you can actually do to ban it outright.  If you disable signatures, which have set limits on the BB code that can be used, people would just start pasting the relevant advertising code directly into their posts, where there's no restriction on the BB code that can be used.  You'd have brand new accounts posting in giant 72px fonts in a various array of colours.  How about some flashing animated gifs for good measure?  Any semblance of legibility in threads would be decimated.  Be careful what you wish for, regulation and banning doesn't work anymore, this is Bitcoin we're talking about.  

Secondary point, have you looked at comments on a youtube video lately?  People don't have to be paid to post stupid shit on the internet.  They spew it freely and in large quantities.

Advertising in posts is banned. If the worry is about spam signups, that is easily avoided by Newbie jail.

[BadBear]

Removing signatures wouldn't necessarily stop paid advertising campaigns anyway.  The irony is, much like Bitcoin itself, there's nothing you can actually do to ban it outright.  If you disable signatures, which have set limits on the BB code that can be used, people would just start pasting the relevant advertising code directly into their posts, where there's no restriction on the BB code that can be used.  You'd have brand new accounts posting in giant 72px fonts in a various array of colours.  How about some flashing animated gifs for good measure?  Any semblance of legibility in threads would be decimated.  Be careful what you wish for, regulation and banning doesn't work anymore, this is Bitcoin we're talking about.  

Secondary point, have you looked at comments on a youtube video lately?  People don't have to be paid to post stupid shit on the internet.  They spew it freely and in large quantities.

Signature content outside of the signature area is already not allowed. If it doesn't fit in the signature area, then it's not an appropriate signature.

[marcotheminer]

The best thing that can be done is to encourage signature campaigns to raise their standards for posting requirements in order to qualify to receive payment at the end of each payment cycle. People exhibiting mindless posting consistently should be barred from the signature campaign. The difficult part is getting the signature campaigns to accept partial liability for the constant spam around the forum. I don't think it will ever be changed because for one it increases the sites traffic and activity, and secondly the majority of signature campaigns will never agree to raise their posting standards because it would limit the amount of exposure for their business/advertisements.

This is actually the thing I strive to do. At the dawn of each monthly payment in the BIT-X.com signature campaign, I look for users who mindlessly post and disqualify those posts. It can become an issue when the campaign develops into a large advertising spree, a bit like PrimeDice was when over 150 users (most likely) were posting non stop. In that case, Stunna had no other choice than to let some pointless posts get paid.

[gogxmagog]

Well, obviously I am making money from a sig campaign, even though my sig is advertising a dud product. Don't ask me how or why, but they give me btc despite the fact I may or may not be almost unanimously ignored and/or derided as a known fool.

I do not agree that this forum has become totally saturated with junk posts, not entirely.
The more technical areas are still good, and some of the more philosophical discussions still hold value for me.
Economics are discussed at length and I for one have learned from these discussions.
Also, I wholly support a moritorium  on sig campaigns. I mean it when I say IDGAF, not just Internet but to your face.
You can bitch about quality or purity or motive, but in the end it is what YOU bring to the table that makes the difference.

"There are no jokes in Islam" Ayhatohlah Khomeni
"Every joke is a tiny revolution" George Orwell