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

[Blazed]

Now that spammers are being cracked down on, and sig campaign managers are taking more action against shit-posting, I'm hoping the situation will get better.

No doubt there is still a problem but disabling them all seems a bit extreme.

I agree they should put pressure on campaign managers to enforce rules better. I wear a paid signature because why not get paid for posting? (I post the same with or without it). I like the paid sigs and will use them so long as they are allowed, but the spamming needs to stop. I think BadBear is doing a good job with spammers lately...him keeping up the pressure might be enough.

Also I disable viewing of signatures so I do not notice them as much 

[CIYAM]

Also I disable viewing of signatures so I do not notice them as much  

As has been pointed out *many, many* times already it is the shit posts not the ads themselves that are the main issue.

Note that only the ad sig posters (such as the one I've quoted) ignore this *time and time again* and keep trying to tell everyone they should disable the sigs when they know full well what the problem is.

Stop with the bullshit please.

Personally I am almost done with this forum - so if they are going to allow the same rubbish on the new forum then @theymos please send me an address to return the 50 BTC I am minding for this forum (I'll send a GPG request for this in the next few weeks I guess).

[erikalui]

Spammers will be found on every forum and it's a thing I have witnessed on every forum till date I have visited. People spam their referral links, make useless posts, derogatory statements, abuse and so on but in that case they do it without getting paid. Here some do it because they get paid while others do it for fun and like a hobby. It's almost impossible to avoid spammers and scammers as one account gets banned, they come back with another account.

[Blazed]

Also I disable viewing of signatures so I do not notice them as much  

As has been pointed out *many, many* times already it is the shit posts not the ads themselves that are the main issue.

Note that only the ad sig posters (such as the one I've quoted) ignore this *time and time again* and keep trying to tell everyone they should disable the sigs when they know full well what the problem is.

Stop with the bullshit please.

Personally I am almost done with this forum - so if they are going to allow the same rubbish on the new forum then @theymos please send me an address to return the 50 BTC I am minding for this forum (I'll send a GPG request for this in the next few weeks I guess).

I said that the spamming needs to stop, and I also disable the sigs. I prefer to not see ads/sigs OR spam.

[SaltySpitoon]

The Staff/Admins have been considering new methods for counteracting signature spam without necessarily banning paid sig advertisements or removing the signature space. If I'm not misinterpreting, most everyone wants to keep the signature space for personal use in play. Removing signatures all together, "As in delete, disable, gone." is a very unlikely senario at this point. Our most promising lead is to add an Ignore Signature option, so that people can turn off signatures they dont want to see. That would ignore all signatures that are the same so one hit of the ignore button for a particular sig would ignore all of the sigs of that design by that campaign. That would require a few additional clicks on the user's end, but if you just casually browse, ignoring signatures that you don't like as you see them it shouldn't take long to have them all ignored (if you so choose)

The effects of that, would be signature advertisements would then become less effective, as people who choose to ignore the annoying signatures no longer are forced to view them, reducing the value of spamming. On the flip side, those lower payments could incentivise additional spamming if people are trying to maintain what they had been earning prior, in which case it becomes that much easier to spot them and remove those people. Spamming is really our only motivation here, we don't care if people want to make a few extra bucks per month posting as they would regularly. We wish that signature campaign managers would work a little bit harder to prevent spam on their ends, but one person can't do the best job of reviewing thousands of posts to make sure that they are quality, so that responsbility falls on the staff.

Regardless, something will be done. It may take us a couple tries to optimize whatever plan we settle on, but the way it is out of hand right now is not here to stay.

[DooMAD]

Based on what I've seen, the easiest fix that causes the least collateral damage is, you should stop campaigns placing a limit on the minimum number of posts per whatever the timeframe is.  I tend not to post a huge amount and mainly just in areas that are of genuine interest to me, unless I'm bored and feel like chucking an opinion in somewhere (and sig or not that's still going to happen).  That's why I picked a campaign that doesn't require 50 posts a month, or 20 per week, like some of the others do in order to "qualify" for a payment.  If you're forcing users to post a certain amount, it makes sense that some of them are going to abuse it and post crap.  Get rid of those silly minimum requirements and I bet you'll see an improvement in quality. 

Also I disable viewing of signatures so I do not notice them as much 

As has been pointed out *many, many* times already it is the shit posts not the ads themselves that are the main issue.

Note that only the ad sig posters (such as the one I've quoted) ignore this *time and time again* and keep trying to tell everyone they should disable the sigs when they know full well what the problem is.

Stop with the bullshit please.

Personally I am almost done with this forum - so if they are going to allow the same rubbish on the new forum then @theymos please send me an address to return the 50 BTC I am minding for this forum (I'll send a GPG request for this in the next few weeks I guess).

But to raise a counterpoint, would the lack of a signature have improved their reading comprehension so that they wouldn't have posted that reply?  Sig or not, people are still more than capable of missing the point entirely.  Not everyone with a paid sig is the same and I don't think it's particularly fruitful to tar everyone with the same brush.  I can't claim that all my posts are perfect, but I doubt anyone can.  Also, please don't go until AT is finished.   

[tspacepilot]

Along the lines of what DOOMad was saying, back in the day the bitmixer campaign was offering a small amount of money to wear their signature no matter whether you posted in a given week or not---they based it on activity, which means that they were paying for posts on the board which were already there.  That scheme was wonderful, I think, because there was no incentive to put any posts beyond the 14 in a 2 week period which buys more activity points.  Too bad they discontinued this program, I guess.

[CIYAM]

I can't claim that all my posts are perfect, but I doubt anyone can.  Also, please don't go until AT is finished.    

Nice to see you've noticed that - mostly I remember how the forum was back in 2012 before there were any ad sig campaigns - the main problem it had then was the "forum rank" being related just to the number of posts (so a huge amount of +1 posts were appearing).

Back then what happened was that "activity" was introduced - a great solution to making the silly posts pointless (and it really helped cleaned the forum up). But then in 2014 these ad sig campaigns started introducing more crap posts than we have ever seen before.

It is a shame to see a forum that used to provide solutions to problems simply "give up" and let the ad sig spammers win.

[Grand_Voyageur]

Along the lines of what DOOMad was saying, back in the day the bitmixer campaign was offering a small amount of money to wear their signature no matter whether you posted in a given week or not---they based it on activity, which means that they were paying for posts on the board which were already there.  That scheme was wonderful, I think, because there was no incentive to put any posts beyond the 14 in a 2 week period which buys more activity points.  Too bad they discontinued this program, I guess.

A capped amount BTC will do the same as linking payments to activity instead of posts. Both Bitmixer and Bitcoin Scratchticket campaigns have caps on the amount they will pay for posts - 0.035BTC, Bitmixer and 0.010BTC, Bitcoin Scratchticket - thus limiting the incentives to spamming posts to the moon. Problems with spam come when unscrupolous campaign managers tell enrollees they will pay posts even over maximum limits like Bit-X formerly did.

[tspacepilot]

Along the lines of what DOOMad was saying, back in the day the bitmixer campaign was offering a small amount of money to wear their signature no matter whether you posted in a given week or not---they based it on activity, which means that they were paying for posts on the board which were already there.  That scheme was wonderful, I think, because there was no incentive to put any posts beyond the 14 in a 2 week period which buys more activity points.  Too bad they discontinued this program, I guess.

A capped amount BTC will do the same as linking payments to activity instead of posts. Both Bitmixer and Bitcoin Scratchticket campaigns have caps on the amount they will pay for posts - 0.035BTC, Bitmixer and 0.010BTC, Bitcoin Scratchticket - thus limiting the incentives to spamming posts to the moon. Problems with spam come when unscrupolous campaign managers tell enrollees they will pay posts even over maximum limits like Bit-X formerly did.

This is a good point that the max payout does something similar to linking to activity however, in my opinion, linking to activity was even better because as an advertizing poster, you didn't need to post anythign at all in order to get a little payment.  Therefore there was no incentive to post anymore than when you actually had something to say.  The old bitmixer campaign was a model situation, in my opinion.  I guess at some point they must have felt like they weren't getting their money's worth as advertizers, though, because, alas, things have changed.

[fonenumba]

I can't claim that all my posts are perfect, but I doubt anyone can.  Also, please don't go until AT is finished.    

Nice to see you've noticed that - mostly I remember how the forum was back in 2012 before there were any ad sig campaigns - the main problem it had then was the "forum rank" being related just to the number of posts (so a huge amount of +1 posts were appearing).

Back then what happened was that "activity" was introduced - a great solution to making the silly posts pointless (and it really helped cleaned the forum up). But then in 2014 these ad sig campaigns started introducing more crap posts than we have ever seen before.

It is a shame to see a forum that used to provide solutions to problems simply "give up" and let the ad sig spammers win.

There were signature campaigns in 2012. BFL was renting out signature space here in 2012. Although it is my understanding that they did not really catch on and become more popular until late 2013/early 2014.

IMO the best solution would be very aggressive against signature spammers in banning them when they make rubbish posts.

Another option would be to publish a spam report that monitors how much spam is associated with each of the various signature campaigns. Then you could push people to not patronize companies that have their campaigns associated with a lot of spam

[Grand_Voyageur]

Along the lines of what DOOMad was saying, back in the day the bitmixer campaign was offering a small amount of money to wear their signature no matter whether you posted in a given week or not---they based it on activity, which means that they were paying for posts on the board which were already there.  That scheme was wonderful, I think, because there was no incentive to put any posts beyond the 14 in a 2 week period which buys more activity points.  Too bad they discontinued this program, I guess.

A capped amount BTC will do the same as linking payments to activity instead of posts. Both Bitmixer and Bitcoin Scratchticket campaigns have caps on the amount they will pay for posts - 0.035BTC, Bitmixer and 0.010BTC, Bitcoin Scratchticket - thus limiting the incentives to spamming posts to the moon. Problems with spam come when unscrupolous campaign managers tell enrollees they will pay posts even over maximum limits like Bit-X formerly did.

This is a good point that the max payout does something similar to linking to activity however, in my opinion, linking to activity was even better because as an advertizing poster, you didn't need to post anythign at all in order to get a little payment.  Therefore there was no incentive to post anymore than when you actually had something to say.  The old bitmixer campaign was a model situation, in my opinion.  I guess at some point they must have felt like they weren't getting their money's worth as advertizers, though, because, alas, things have changed.

Bitmixer seems really concerned about the need to limit spam. IMO another good practice could be forfeiting sig ad payments to spammers and giving them to initiatives like Help the forum and earn Bitcoins!. Something like a Pigovian tax to curb spam - spam can be considered a negative externality.
I would like an activity-linked payment system, too; however, i'm not sure advertisers find it good enough for them.

[fox19891989]

This thread was post half a year ago, but the signature campaign is still here, not banned.

It means that admin and mods think signature campaign is reasonable.

It can help btc business going on in this forum, why ban it?

[ndnh]

Then we have the activity/post count chasers, which you can see from dozens of "why isn't my activity going up" posts. There's another number that can just be removed from posts. Take away that incentive to post junk also.

(What??? Everyone newbies?)
It wouldn't work.

The best thing to do is to ban all those who spam the forum. (And they are doing a good job at that. )

[justusranvier]

The Staff/Admins have been considering new methods for counteracting signature spam without necessarily banning paid sig advertisements or removing the signature space. If I'm not misinterpreting, most everyone wants to keep the signature space for personal use in play. Removing signatures all together, "As in delete, disable, gone." is a very unlikely senario at this point. Our most promising lead is to add an Ignore Signature option, so that people can turn off signatures they dont want to see. That would ignore all signatures that are the same so one hit of the ignore button for a particular sig would ignore all of the sigs of that design by that campaign. That would require a few additional clicks on the user's end, but if you just casually browse, ignoring signatures that you don't like as you see them it shouldn't take long to have them all ignored (if you so choose)

The effects of that, would be signature advertisements would then become less effective, as people who choose to ignore the annoying signatures no longer are forced to view them, reducing the value of spamming. On the flip side, those lower payments could incentivise additional spamming if people are trying to maintain what they had been earning prior, in which case it becomes that much easier to spot them and remove those people. Spamming is really our only motivation here, we don't care if people want to make a few extra bucks per month posting as they would regularly. We wish that signature campaign managers would work a little bit harder to prevent spam on their ends, but one person can't do the best job of reviewing thousands of posts to make sure that they are quality, so that responsbility falls on the staff.

Regardless, something will be done. It may take us a couple tries to optimize whatever plan we settle on, but the way it is out of hand right now is not here to stay.

Bring back colors in the ignore link.

The feedback that used to provide was probably the single best defense we had against this kind of spammer.

[tspacepilot]

If signature is removed, i bet some users will leave this forum forever
And there are less active users in this forum

It's better banned spammer in this forum
Not 14 days banned, but a month

FWIW, there are a lot of people on this forum who would just say "good riddance" to those people.  I can say that even though I've made a few satoshi's here and there with paid signature ads, I certainly wouldn't leave the forum and never come back if the opportunity to make a little BTC was ended.  I'd still need to check in on what's going on with bitcoin, the software I use, the projects participate in, etc.

[tspacepilot]

If signature is removed, i bet some users will leave this forum forever  (...)

No worries this forum is democratic and the majority want the signatures to stay.
...

It's actually not democratic at all.  It's a private forum run by a private individual who hires a staff to help out.  While this private individual certainly solicits feedback from and works with the community who uses the forum, this is in no way a democracy.  I think the actual form of government here is something like a benevolent dictatorship. 

[saddampbuh]

but i like my signature

[sdp]

Ban advertising signatures and I would still use this forum.  It is not like you can feed your family with ad tips.  Posting should probably be an altruistic act in the first place because most people couldn't pay what it would cost if everyone charged a reasonable amount of money for the time they put into this forum.  Some have profit motives in ads they put, or services they offer, or the like, but for myself it is to teach and learn and maybe have some fun.

sdp

[sed]

Ban advertising signatures and I would still use this forum.  It is not like you can feed your family with ad tips.  Posting should probably be an altruistic act in the first place because most people couldn't pay what it would cost if everyone charged a reasonable amount of money for the time they put into this forum.  Some have profit motives in ads they put, or services they offer, or the like, but for myself it is to teach and learn and maybe have some fun.

sdp

Of course almost everyone on here with an interest in bitcoin will stick around no matter if they did remove signatures.  TBH, the kind of poster who said above about leaving if they remove signatures is exactly the kind of person that's causing people to consider banning signatures.  I make a little btc with a signature ad but it's certainly not the reason why I use the forum.