Topic: 2 suggestions to eliminate bumping services & the spam being encouraged in Anns (Read 379 times)

I like it but I've seen higher ranks do the bumping as well, so how about only bumping the thread whenever the "thread starter (OP)" posts something on the thread (this way moderators can easily monitor their actions [no loopholes])?

I like this one as well but there are few things:

- Fees should be significant.
- The appearance of altcoin board, after having a lot of dedicated sub boards.
- theymos might not accept this one (in a way it has a similar effect to the "ad spaces" on this forum):

Good ideas, but those require quite a few structural changes to forum itself and the way is working, plus people to manage the whole new announcement system. As for all non trivial changes, i think is unlikely these will be even taken into consideration, unfortunately.

Why would they use bump bots in their own sub board? It defeats the purpose. People use bump bots to bump their thread to the top for publicity over all the other ICOs.


I like the idea but they won't do it, nor will they know how to moderate effectively here or by our standards (that's something you learn over time by reporting etc).


ICOs should have to compensate the forum in some capacity. Not only does the forum likely lose out hundreds of thousands if not millions in potential advertising revenue as those ICOs would advertise here via banners (and many do try but theymos has blocked them from adverting now), but they also cause 95% of the spam and destruction of the forum via signature campaigns and doing nothing at all about the spam they cause. In fact, spam is good for them. The more people spamming their signature the more adverting they get for free and this is why they accept anyone and everyone. This can't be acceptable and needs to change. The longer we ignore it the more people exploit it and the worse things get. We can't let ICOs and the get rich quick schemesters behind them drive the forum into the ground. This place is an absolute paradise for them and we let them do whatever they want and this needs to change.


Well I initially only suggested it for the Ann board and anywhere else where people are using paid bumping bot services to keep their thread at the top, but you could extend it to other boards where potential abuse may happen. I see a lot of idiots using shills in Digital Goods etc to ask a stupid fake question or post a fake vouch to keep the thread on top and it could certainly be used there. The thread could still show up in your 'show new replies' but it's just not bumped publicly on the board which is what they're after. If this can be implemented then I think it will render bump bots useless.

As for manually whitelisting, I think it would help clean up the forum immensely and it would stop 99% of bots from becoming an eyesore and a nuisance, but I know it will be a lot of extra work for staff (but nuking bots and also  idiots who write exclusively 'good project' is also very time-consuming). I'm also not sure whether it's something theymos would do, but it certainly should be considered and plenty of other forums already use this sort of mechanism.  

That's the point I wanted to make. Now that I manage a couple of service threads I get a lot of people that only joined the forum to ask a question or raise a support issue. It would make it difficult for me to have to keep checking to see if there were new posts.

We've discussed this recently in other threads and I still think manually approving the first post for each new account, as is done on many other forums, is the best way to combat this.

They will probably start doing it with accounts >= Member that either have positive or negative trust. If they don't have them, they will start buying them in chunks from people as it does not cost a lot to buy a negative trusted account because people don't use them after they get tagged and everyone would rush in to sell them if they see an opportunity.
So maybe, in addition to that, any post from an account with any rank should not bump a thread to the top if it is red tagged. That might make it a little more workable.
 

Not sure how getting rid of the Announcement board would turn out, but I really like the idea of ICOs paying a certain fee for their listings and running bounties in the forum. I have always wondered why there hasn't been anything like that up until now.

Some of the ICOs are making to much spams here and also encouraging fake deals for investors which would later result in high loss of many peoples!!. I think the listing pattens of ICO should be surely changed and only a legit ICO with reputed or recognized members should be able to announce here!!

#1: totally agree.

#2: Would the ICO be able to rename/rebrand itself? Wouldn't the list of boards turn into a similar mess like the ANN board is now? How would the ICOs be sorted in that list?

I wouldn't mind charging a fee as that would take care not only of spamming but also eliminate many cheap scams, but there are some potential loopholes I think.

The ANN Board can be made similar to Ivory Board where only copper members, full members and above can reply to a topic. How about only silver members (as to what digaran suggested) alone can start a topic in ANN boards? Bumping services cannot buy 100s and 500s of copper membership nor they can never receive 100 merits to become a full member in a shorter span. This will leave them to buying only a single copper membership and bumping the thread which can be easily detected and banned. This not only calms down the ANN Board also reduces the Jr and Newbie spams a lot.

P. S There are lots of members apart from staffs who are spending their whole day in the forum. Why can't they be hired to moderate the Altcoin Boards? theymos is literally pretty busy nowadays and I think we won't even see the new forum software until 2019 nor we won't see new members being appointed as mods for altcoin and other boards which needs an additional moderator right now.

Only for certain boards, right? A Newbie with a serious question should still get the attention he needs.

I disagree with both points. Some posts in ANN-threads deserve merit (example), and the merit traders will just pollute other boards for their business. The same will happen if they can't earn activity there. Lack of Merit is what should stop them from ranking up, not lack of Activity.

This won't work. Bump spam has accomplished it's goal, even if it gets deleted within a few minutes. Even worse: the ANN-threads that are self-moderated, (ab)use that power to delete bump spam to make it less noticeable. The bump bots used to do that on their own, but can't delete their own posts within 24 hours anymore (this restriction was created to stop bump bots).

The payment should be per thread, as the amount of spam increases with each additional thread.
And I don't think it should be a special rank that makes the account look better than it is.

Silver membership cost 0.02BTC to enable starting a new topic in ANN board.
Also, don't allow newbie posts to bump the threads.
I just plagiarized you Don.

I completely agree with this. These will eliminate ICO bumping completely but the spamming will be there as the newbies can post anytime in the thread. Its just it will not go to the top.

What I'm suggesting is to put a rank requirement in the Announcement Section which is not bad I think. Putting a rank requirement there will completely remove the spamming of newbies and some Jr. Members in the section and in order for them to post, they must have a rank of Member up to Legendary or must be a Copper Member. Maybe there are some newbies who are posting good there but removing them completely is the best way for me I think.

Agree, it's good idea. But even just stop posting for newbie on Marketplace ( Altcoins) can possible prevent 80% spam and bump.

Not agree. Forum will be more spoil. They will just pay fee for board or sub-board and same will promote by alt account instead of bump. How ever it will same spam.
Better solution I think leave it same board. Yes you can suggest for fee on same board but personally I discourage.

I think restrict posting below member & reply / quote restriction below Jr. Member. So below member will not able to make thread , below Jr. will not able to reply or quote. If implement this I believe 80% spam will reduce.

Dude,that is way too harsh. Mods are paid to do moderate, while the ICO thread starters aren't. theymos would never implement such a thing. Don't even bother recommending it. h&co has been annoying theymos everyday for years now and he got nothing(as in no reply).

No self-moderated topic = trash can directly + OP ban.
No moderation to the self-moderated topic = trash can directly + OP ban + ICO prohibition on bitcointalk.

Point number 2, first alternative:
It will never happen. Some ICOs will pay the bumping service (reading the forum is around 50$) to bump their treads, I cant see how the manager can ever report the spam on own thread, more views, more clicks, more google researchs -> more money for bounty manager.

1) Good idea but it should be restricted to certain sections only.
2) I prefer to offer 2 alternatives :
First one : ICO don't pay anything but the manager has to open a self-moderated topic and like the wall observer topic, all reports go to the manager and he is obliged to remove the spam or else the topic will get trashed.
Second option : ICOs have to pay a fee that goes to the forum mods to clean the spam out of the forums.

Whilst I don't think many staff members would say no to a raise, we're essentially volunteers here. Theymos did mention changing the mod payment algorithm a while back but I have no idea whether that would lead to an increase of decrease in staff earnings. It depends how it's changed, but I do think the way the payment algorithm works here isn't actually representative of the work being put in i.e. one patroller could maybe handle 500 reports a month and another 5000 and they would both likely get a very similar payment if not the same. Whether I handle zero bans or 1000 I don't think that has any effect on payment either.


1) I wouldn't necessarily be against it, but alternatively you could say people should be able to merit whatever they like. I think giving ANN threads merit is largely useless, but if a worthwhile project popped up that could change an industry or was proposing an excellent product then I wouldn't have an issue in meriting that. I think there are bigger issues right now than people meriting ANN threads which seems like a non-issue to me.
2) Wouldn't be against that either, but I think there are boards more suited to activity not counting (bounties etc) and since we have merit shitposting is largely useless without the merit which they wont ever get.
3) I would be against this. Doesn't really solve anything to be honest and it stops new users from posting them and they will just hire other users to do the listing for them. Charging users a fee would just be better in my opinion.

I have seen some replies made in ANN threads which I think is very useful for their community. Sometimes ANN threads are used for communication and sharing of ideas to make their project become more effective in the near future since they do not have a telegram community. Giving merits should be allowed in all section. It is easy to determine if the user is abusing the merit system right? Merits are for all people whose post are useful no matter where/ what section he/she posted.
Agreed, bots will be useless when it comes to farming activity. 1 merit requirement would be a perfect match for this.
I think this would be better requirement when it comes to bounty hunting to ensure that the bounty participants are not spamming and does not create shit posts. Payment for making ANN threads is enough I think, this way we can reduce the number of scammy ICO's.

People are free to give merits to whom they want and where they want. Stopping them from doing this would bring out the "Freedom of speech" thought in some people. In fact those people who are meriting ANN threads are going to be wasting their shitposter merits because they want to be noticed by the bounty manager - something like "Notice me senpai" - so it will drain the shitposter merit pool. Which is a good thing and thus I am against your idea.

Simply posting in ANN threads all day? Kinda sucks for those people. Nah you are over-exxagerating it. Getting 14activity for a fortnight just need you to make 1 single post in any section of the forum in that period. If these shitposters are brain-dead to that extent then they need to stop coming to the internet.

I think paying of a fee to start ANN threads is better. Not every ICO team will have a member here who is ready to earn merits everyday and thus get ready to be able to post an ANN. They often start with an newbie account from scratch. In another sense, it will only promote the merit sales more if you think carefully. There would start a inherent "need" for merit and there will be the abundance of merit with others. So now you can understand what may happen if this would be allowed.

I like the second idea a lot, similar to reddit sub-boards, but I doubt theymos to ever implement it, it would take a lot of work, and theymos IS swamped with things, as he has told several times. If ICOs have to pay money, I would suggest theymos to pay a little more to the current staff here. What they are paid != Work they do. They need to be compensated properly.

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1. Why not? If quality posts could be made there, why should merit not be allowed? Although it is a rarity for that to happen.

2. Not a bad idea, this could help in combating bots, the activity would only count for Full members and above.

3. Please don't. Let merit just be a rank requirement. As it is, not everybody is here for bounty hunting, but for business purposes as well.