Rules like that are horrible for spam, I wouldn't take part in a sig campaign that forces people to post that much, some are fantastic, like the one I'm in (
) so I don't think it would be fair to ban all of them, just the ones that are deliberately trying to encourage spamming. The best thing people can do is instead of getting the mods involved don't even bother going for these campaigns so these marketers learn, they're only doing it because they know some people will go for it.
I agree. The rule in the OP was replaced with a rule saying that participants must post at least 10 posts in the bitcoin discussion and 10 posts in beginners and help sections. I think the majority of posts are in bitcoin discussion (at least the most posts end up there) so this should be expected if someone is making 75-100 posts per month. I don't think there are enough qualified people to be posting in beginners and help (they will probably give out bad information) and even when they do give out good information, there are not enough questions asked in beginners and help to warrant 650 replies per month without answering the same question multiple times. I think this rule is encouraging ad spam in the beginners section and is hoping to get people to sign up for their exchange when they are new to the forum.
Flat fees and low post requirements are the way to go, people will post more naturally then rather than feeling pressured to make a post quota, I have seen people actually turn around a few campaign organisers on their original requirements including the one I'm in so it does work to just talk to them.
I am not sure about this. This is certainly beneficial for the advertisers (eg the users) but it may not be as effective from a cost standpoint, especially when dealing with a large advertising budget. I think campaigns should have a simple no spam rule (and possibly a no negative trust rule) and that is it. Anything else will cause people to post just for posting.
Meh, whatever. Stuff like this will just garner more support to bring an end to sig campaigns sooner rather than later. It's inevitable really, just a question of when. It's a shame, because they aren't all bad, it's just the ones that don't care about anything other than their profits that will ruin it for everyone. Kind of a shame because they aren't all bad.
Sadly this is probably true. Signature campaigns are a great way for users to earn their first bitcoin and does give people incentives to discuss bitcoin and things related to bitcoin in a non-spammy way (in a perfect world). I am not entirely sure what happened that caused the spam to get so much worse in recent months (yes it was signature spam, but signature campaigns have been around a long time before we had such large issues with signature spam at these levels)
