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

[medUSA]

(I have a paid sig, so my comment could be seen as biased)

I read a lot of threads but do not post very much. Most contentless/pointless comments are not made by members with paid signatures. Take a look at the off-topic or marketplace section, you will find that most "spammers" have no paid sigs. If members wish to increase their activity score, they only need to post 1 per day, spamming doesn't help at all. So why do they spam? I honestly don't know, I can only guess they genuinely likes to chat?

I have been here for over a year, I have felt post quality degraded too, but has it really?

Popularity - More people around the world are gathering here. We are surely going to have more bitcoin newbies.
Dilution - I think good quality threads has been diluted and lost in a sea of spam. Quality threads are still here, just buried.
Expectation - When one learns more about bitcoin, posts which were previously "interesting" or "quality" posts becomes boring. Not because of the change in actual quality, but the more knowledgeable reader expects more.

To be frank, there really isn't much going on right now to have "quality" discussions everyday.

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[justusranvier]

643 for me

1665

[pajak666]

Remove the signatures! content is sinking

[EvilPanda]

(I have a paid sig, so my comment could be seen as biased)

I read a lot of threads but do not post very much. Most contentless/pointless comments are not made by members with paid signatures. Take a look at the off-topic or marketplace section, you will find that most "spammers" have no paid sigs. If members wish to increase their activity score, they only need to post 1 per day, spamming doesn't help at all. So why do they spam? I honestly don't know, I can only guess they genuinely likes to chat?

I have been here for over a year, I have felt post quality degraded too, but has it really?

Popularity - More people around the world are gathering here. We are surely going to have more bitcoin newbies.
Dilution - I think good quality threads has been diluted and lost in a sea of spam. Quality threads are still here, just buried.
Expectation - When one learns more about bitcoin, posts which were previously "interesting" or "quality" posts becomes boring. Not because of the change in actual quality, but the more knowledgeable reader expects more.

To be frank, there really isn't much going on right now to have "quality" discussions everyday.

I agree.

You guys are fighting windmills here.
People on this forum are trading trust, spamming (also without paid signatures). Bans are very rare and even if they occur the spammers just make another account, which takes them less than 5 minutes.
Spammy posts are rarely removed, even if the spammers are banned their crap stays there.
Some of the known scammers (like Karpeles) are still in the default trust for some unknown reason...
With all of the above you're focusing on paid signatures?

Simple supply and demand - there's demand for advertising, so people are paying for it. You have the choice to hide the signatures and/or to ignore the posters, just as the moderators can ban the spammers.
As someone said earlier in the thread: don't be selfish. There are newbies here, who want to earn their first bitcoin, and the signature campaigns are one of the easiest ways to do it.

[fsb4000]

good idea 

[ninjarobot]

You can disable signatures in the settings. Cleans everything up nicely:

Profile > Look and Layout Preferences > Don't show users' signatures

[dserrano5]

You can disable signatures in the settings. Cleans everything up nicely:

Profile > Look and Layout Preferences > Don't show users' signatures

But the quality of the posts remains poor.

[BadBear]

Bans are very rare and even if they occur the spammers just make another account, which takes them less than 5 minutes.

Ban's aren't that rare, banned almost 50 accounts today, closing in on 400 for the week, with thousands of posts deleted. Making new accounts isn't very effective with the signature restrictions, if they do they'll be more careful because of the time invested. It's easy to pretend we don't do anything because you don't see it, but reality is we do quite a lot.

[tss]

what bothers me most is that even senior members are willing to advertise obvious schemes and scams in order to get a few satoshis over advertising casinos which pay less than the obvious scams.

[BurtW]

Bans are very rare and even if they occur the spammers just make another account, which takes them less than 5 minutes.

Ban's aren't that rare, banned almost 50 accounts today, closing in on 400 for the week, with thousands of posts deleted. Making new accounts isn't very effective with the signature restrictions, if they do they'll be more careful because of the time invested. It's easy to pretend we don't do anything because you don't see it, but reality is we do quite a lot.

THANK YOU BadBear and all the others who work so hard to keep this place as clean as it is.  Just the number of posts simply moved from the incorrect sub-forums to the correct sub-forums is mind boggling - let alone the amount of crap that does get deleted and the number of obvious spammers that do get banned.

I can't even begin to imagine how bad it would be here without your totally appreciated efforts and the efforts of all the others who work here.

[CIYAM]

It's easy to pretend we don't do anything because you don't see it, but reality is we do quite a lot.

The work you do is appreciated but still I see "pointless post after pointless post" that are basically no better than the old +1's generally with PrimeDice in their sig (the number one sponsor of useless posts on this forum IMO).

Maybe the sponsor should be banned (then they might be more picky about who they let post for them)?

Perhaps also sigs could be limited to not appear in any "useful boards" (that way they useless posters can just post in useless boards such as Lending).

[Stunna]

It's easy to pretend we don't do anything because you don't see it, but reality is we do quite a lot.

The work you do is appreciated but still I see "pointless post after pointless post" that are basically no better than the old +1's generally with PrimeDice in their sig (the number one sponsor of useless posts on this forum IMO).

Maybe the sponsor should be banned (then they might be more picky about who they let post for them)?

Perhaps also sigs could be limited to not appear in any "useful boards" (that way they useless posters can just post in useless boards such as Lending).

We actually ended paying per post count two days ago, I agree it definitely was watering down the quality of posts on this forum to a drastic degree. For anyone wondering we honestly did try hard to prevent spam in the campaign with last round reduced down to senior/hero members only and half of the seniors cut out but when the incentive to post is so high, spam is impossible to prevent. I still feel bad for popularizing this disruptive form of advertisement.

If you want this issue to be solved entirely it's simple, you just ban campaigns that pay per post. If you are paying a fixed amount for advertising depending on a user's rank then there is no reason to believe spam would increase as a result.

It's important to also make it more difficult to evade bans and outright ban the sale of accounts.

[Vod]

Bans are very rare and even if they occur the spammers just make another account, which takes them less than 5 minutes.

Ban's aren't that rare, banned almost 50 accounts today, closing in on 400 for the week, with thousands of posts deleted. Making new accounts isn't very effective with the signature restrictions, if they do they'll be more careful because of the time invested. It's easy to pretend we don't do anything because you don't see it, but reality is we do quite a lot.

Yeah, you guys need to require email validation.  Too easy to create accounts en masse.

[CIYAM]

If you want this issue to be solved entirely it's simple, you just ban campaigns that pay per post. If you are paying a fixed amount for advertising depending on a user's rank then there is no reason to believe spam would increase as a result.

It's important to also make it more difficult to evade bans and outright ban the sale of accounts.

Thanks for this input and for stopping the campaign that has led to so many stupid posts being made in every board on the forum. Let's just hope others don't follow your original path (if the forum isn't going to do anything to prevent it).

[EvilPanda]

Bans are very rare and even if they occur the spammers just make another account, which takes them less than 5 minutes.

Ban's aren't that rare, banned almost 50 accounts today, closing in on 400 for the week, with thousands of posts deleted. Making new accounts isn't very effective with the signature restrictions, if they do they'll be more careful because of the time invested. It's easy to pretend we don't do anything because you don't see it, but reality is we do quite a lot.

I'm not talking about signature spam here. Most of the spam I see here is made by newbies and Jr. members and they don't care about restrictions and don't put effort into creating new profiles.
Some time ago I saw a guy bragging he was making over a 100 posts a day with a signature and it took you at least 2 months to notice and ban him, so he managed to earn about 2BTC before being caught. IMO this is rather tempting.
Honestly from my point of view it looks like you're picking ants with a straw, one by one. I've reported numerous posts that were obvious spam attempts and, although sometimes the posters were temporarily banned, the posts weren't removed as I was told such is the forum policy and if I want to remove posts I have to make a self moderated thread.

[BadBear]

I'm not talking about signature spam here.

And here I thought this was a thread about signatures, must've taken a wrong turn somewhere .

[EvilPanda]

I'm not talking about signature spam here.

And here I thought this was a thread about signatures, must've taken a wrong turn somewhere .

You missed the point again (focusing on the signatures with people spamming without them) It's ok if you don't want to talk about it.

[CIYAM]

And here I thought this was a thread about signatures, must've taken a wrong turn somewhere .

The problem is *shit posts* (the sigs being sponsored is what has led to it).

Do you not see the *connection* between these two things?

[BurtW]

OK, I will modify my stance:

One warning then perm ban anyone with a pay-per-post signature.

Allow signatures, allow ads (just not pay-per-post ads), allow links, allow pretty pictures, etc.

Although I would totally support text only and no links if that also helps.

[BadBear]

And here I thought this was a thread about signatures, must've taken a wrong turn somewhere .

The problem is *shit posts* (the sigs being sponsored is what has led to it).

Do you not see the *connection* between these two things?

Of course I do, but EvilPanda is trying to deflect from the issue this thread is about by saying people spam anyway, which is a valid concern but it isn't what the thread is about. Read what he said.

I'm not talking about signature spam here. Most of the spam I see here is made by newbies and Jr. members and they don't care about restrictions and don't put effort into creating new profiles.

I'm not talking about signature spam here.

And here I thought this was a thread about signatures, must've taken a wrong turn somewhere .

You missed the point again (focusing on the signatures with people spamming without them) It's ok if you don't want to talk about it.

I'm not missing the point, I'm ignoring it because it's off topic. This thread is about signatures and the resulting spam, if you want to talk about general spam sans signatures then make another thread and stop trying to derail this one. If you're trying to make a point that signatures don't cause extra spam, then make it, and we'll agree to disagree. 

OK, I will modify my stance:

One warning then perm ban anyone with a pay-per-post signature.

Allow signatures, allow ads (just not pay-per-post ads), allow links, allow pretty pictures, etc.

Although I would totally support text only and no links if that also helps.

We currently do a 3 strikes and you're out, 2 weeks>1 month>permaban is the typical progression.