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

[CIYAM]

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.

So let's forget about EvilPanda and focus on the *real issue* - we are seeing a huge amount of *useless posts* in every board because people can *make money from that*.

That is the real issue that needs to be fixed (otherwise this forum is going to end up being not worth reading at all).

Even the tech topics are spammed with *rubbish* from people trying to earn money from their sigs (am sure Gavin and others are not impressed).

I noticed that even I was stupid enough to respond to a *supposed newbie* about how Bitcoin works only to notice later that their sig has PrimeDice in it (so they were just posting an old many times answered question to get paid). BTW Danny Hamilton also replied (so not it's not just me wasting time on this stuff).

[tspacepilot]

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. 

 

BadBear,  EvilPanda's argument *is* germane to the topic.  The OP suggests that sig-ads have caused a terrible increase in spam.  As fas as I can tell, EvilPanda is arguing that sig-ad spam is negiligible compared to overall spam.  You might disagree with him but it's hardly off-topic.  To my mind it's a quite valid rebuttal (which might obviously be disagreed with).

If I say high speed-limits are a major cause of death for citizens of country X, and you reply that the deaths on the road in that country are actually randomly distributed with respect to speeds---that the real problem is quality control on tire production.  I might say 'hey, you're derailing my thread about about speed-limits' but in fact you're simply disagreeing with my premise---not off topic in any way.

[BombaUcigasa]

How to hide signatures:
Open AdBlockPlus Options: chrome-extension://cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb/options.html
Click Add your own filters, enter this filter: bitcointalk.org,##div.signature
Done!

[BadBear]

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.

So let's forget about EvilPanda and focus on the *real issue* - we are seeing a huge amount of *useless posts* in every board because people can *make money from that*.

That is the real issue that needs to be fixed (otherwise this forum is going to end up being not worth reading at all).

Even the tech topics are spammed with *rubbish* from people trying to earn money from their sigs (am sure Gavin and others are not impressed).

I noticed that even I was stupid enough to respond to a *supposed newbie* about how Bitcoin works only to notice later that their sig has PrimeDice in it (so they were just posting an old many times answered question to get paid). BTW Danny Hamilton also replied (so not it's not just me wasting time on this stuff).

I think everyone agrees it's an issue. Real question is if it's enough of an issue to take further action, and if so, what course of action would be best?

BadBear,  EvilPanda's argument *is* germane to the topic.  The OP suggests that sig-ads have caused a terrible increase in spam.  As fas as I can tell, EvilPanda is arguing that sig-ad spam is negiligible compared to overall spam.  You might disagree with him but it's hardly off-topic.  To my mind it's a quite valid rebuttal (which might obviously be disagreed with).

If I say high speed-limits are a major cause of death for citizens of country X, and you reply that the deaths on the road in that country are actually randomly distributed with respect to speeds---that the real problem is quality control on tire production.  I might say 'hey, you're derailing my thread about about speed-limits' but in fact you're simply disagreeing with my premise---not off topic in any way.

If you're trying to make a point that signatures don't cause extra spam, then make it, and we'll agree to disagree.  

[Puppet]

Real question is if it's enough of an issue to take further action, and if so, what course of action would be best?

How it could it not be enough of an issue? Seriously, the past year or so, Ive basically only posted in threads I was already subscribed to, because if I click "show unread posts", I have to stroll through 200 pages of worthless threads to find perhaps one that might be interesting. And usually even then its not, because the bulk of the posts are again from spammers.

As for the course of action; start by the simplest solution. It wont solve all problems, but it would be a giant leap forward: disable ads in signatures or signatures all together.

[CIYAM]

I think everyone agrees it's an issue. Real question is if it's enough of an issue to take further action, and if so, what course of action would be best?

Well - it seems a lot of people do think this is a *real issue* but what further action is maybe for you mods to decide.

What I think most people like me would like to see is less *pointless posts* that are made just for getting sig rewards.

[zolace]

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).

I see people posting stupid without sigs, I wonder what are the next whinning gonna be now, when there is no one to blame for it.  Wait!!! the flat rate campaigns are spamming, I just people just whine and cry in these forums no better then the spammers.
We should ban the whiners too.  You know what no matter what you did Stunna people are always gonna complain. Also Im gonna keep my PD sig just to annoy the whiners

[BurtW]

I see people posting stupid without sigs, I wonder what are the next whinning gonna be now, when there is no one to blame for it.  Wait!!! the flat rate campaigns are spamming, I just people just whine and cry in these forums no better then the spammers.
We should ban the whiners too.  You know what no matter what you did Stunna people are always gonna complain. Also Im gonna keep my PD sig just to annoy the whiners

We already thanked and appreciated PD for moving away from the pay-per-post signature campaign.  We, well I, am no longer complaining about PD.  I think it would be a very good idea for everyone to follow PD's example and eliminate pay-per-post campaigns.  That would be a great step in the right direction.

[johncarpe64]

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.

If you would stop paying someone .001 BTC for every post up to 400 posts per month then users would not want to try to post 400 posts per month.

If you are paying users a fixed rate (say .1 per month) for a minimum number of posts (say 50) then you are still paying on a per post basis, only that you will pay more per post and pay for less overall posts. The result is that users would make 50 posts (in my example) and then stop. "banning" pay per post signature campaigns will not stop anything. The only way to get completely away from "pay per post" is to pay users a fixed amount regardless of how much they post during that payment period.

The fact is that paid signatures allow for bitcoin related businesses to grow, which will allow the overall bitcoin economy to grow.

I do agree with evilpanda that there is a significant amount of spam from newer members without any kind of signature for reasons. I am not sure if these posts would qualify as the forum's definition of "spam" but I have scrolled past pages of one sentence posts that really have nothing that can be replied to in any way. When you have a paid signature, if your posts are insubstantial enough then the campaign operator may not pay that user, so they have a disincentive to outright spam, this risk is not present for people without signatures. If a campaign operator does not police the quality of their users' posts then the advertising will not be as effective.

It should also be understood that a single answer in a newbie thread will (should) not be considered to be credible to the newbie regardless of it's accuracy. If someone is a newbie, then they do not know who to trust and a scammer could potentially say something that "sounds good" or "sounds right" but is not. If multiple people respond with the general same answer then such answer would have somewhat higher level of legitimacy.

I do think that many people with paid signatures would likely not be here if it were not for the paid signature (nor would they be interested in or use bitcoin). Having a paid signature does give some people the incentive to learn about (and ultimately use) bitcoin. I think this fact outweighs the negative effects of the (IMO small amount of) additional spam that results from paid signatures.  

[hikedoon]

I agree. Ban all signatures.

[vipgelsi]

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

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

Gonna try this thanks.

[inigthz]

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.

Nah, problem is solved right??

There are opinion nor solution.

Be smart!

[BurtW]

Hiding signatures does not solve the problem of people posting crap in order to make money in pay-per-post signature campaigns.  

Sure, it screws with the company paying for the campaign since I don't see their ads but it will not reduce the amount of crap posts.

I would be happy with the simple step of banning all pay-per-post signature campaigns, entities that promote them, and people who participate in them and see if that helps.  The actual implementation would be per BadBear's post:

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

[zimmah]

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.

report them for spamming.

It's not illegal to advertise, but spamming is still not allowed. Sig campaigns usually only pay out for constructive post (or at least trying to be constructive).

If someone is obviously padding his post count, just report them, make sure to also report them to the owner of the ad campaign.

Besides, I have seen many people with a signature that make constructive post, as well as people without a signature that are just trolling.

The persons that make unnecessary posts just for payment are not that many, for the obvious reason that they do not want to risk getting banned or getting kicked from the sig campaign.

And you can just ignore/report those people.

And if you want to ignore everyone with a paid signature, regardless of the quality of their posts, that's your problem, but i'm not going to let you be the judge of my actions. Extra income is still extra income. Maybe you are one of those lucky few who heard about bitcoin in 2010 and are sitting on a pile of them and don't need the extra 0.1 bitcoin per month, but that doesn't mean we all do.

How to hide signatures:
Open AdBlockPlus Options: chrome-extension://cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb/options.html
Click Add your own filters, enter this filter: bitcointalk.org,##div.signature
Done!

Seriously though, you can just disable signatures in settings.

[CIYAM]

report them for spamming.

So - we should all have to do *work* for being forced to read crap by people being paid to post it?

I think in that case that the advertisers should be forced to pay 0.001 BTC per *report* in that case (that will stop them doing these campaigns pretty quickly).

Theymos - I suggest advertisers have to send 1 BTC to be held in escrow and that for every shit post with an ad in the sig 0.001 BTC is rewarded for each hero+ forum member reporting it (if the 1 BTC is depleted then the advertiser's links should be banned).

[CIYAM]

Seriously though, you can just disable signatures in settings.

And seriously you don't get that the point is the SHIT POSTS not the sigs themselves?

(sheesh)

[justusranvier]

And seriously you don't get that the point is the SHIT POSTS not the sigs themselves?

Motivated ignorance, I think.

[zimmah]

report them for spamming.

So - we should all have to do *work* for being forced to read crap by people being paid to post it?

I think in that case that the advertisers should be forced to pay 0.001 BTC per *report* in that case (that will stop them doing these campaigns pretty quickly).

Theymos - I suggest advertisers have to send 1 BTC to be held in escrow and that for every shit post with an ad in the sig 0.001 BTC is rewarded for each hero+ forum member reporting it (if the 1 BTC is depleted then the advertiser's links should be banned).

they are not paid to post crap, they are paid for the advertising space underneath their constructive posts.

some people are just really complaining about everything...

be glad bitcoin related business is able to create some jobs for people who need the extra income. That's a sign of good bitcoin activity.

[CIYAM]

some people are just really complaining about everything...

Just noticed your sig - no wonder you are posting this crap.

I have reported you and your sponsor owes me 0.001 BTC now.

[EvilPanda]

And seriously you don't get that the point is the SHIT POSTS not the sigs themselves?

Motivated ignorance, I think.

Sounds funny said by the guy with one of the longest ignore lists on the forum...

Regarding spam:
One of the newbies I have reported back in the day (he hasn't been banned)