Topic: A letter to the members of Bitcointalk forum... from a member... (Read 1785 times)

Statements one and two bite eachother. This is why all campaigns must go imho

PD wasn't an example of the beginning but rather when they became much, much larger. PD at one point held a majority of signatures to the point where there were Meta rants daily. And yes, I was around for the Inputs campaign (and coinchat - which marco should remember) and the whole subsequent scandal and saga. I've been here for an incredibly long time - mostly lurking and taking hiatuses now and then, but I can say with surety that I've found things are vastly different.

From my standpoint, there just isn't anything left to say for us - there just isn't the conversation to be had that there once was - a lot of the new threads and posts are just fluff with little thought or insight.

My thoughts conveyed perfectly, thank you.

No that's not the begging of signature campaigns, is it? Have you participated in Inputs.io? People come and go, you can't change that. The ones that are spamming throughout the day trying to abuse the system are never gonna achieve anything anyways. The old guard should follow their paths and not waste time with such people. I'm pretty sure that if signature campaigns were completely removed or hard restrictions were placed on them that things would start changing.
What normal person would go through all the sections trying to do over 50 posts a day? I'm talking about posts that look okay but serve no purpose and are the result of careful spamming? None. Sure there still would be the usual spammers but they get banned quickly.

People pay for article writers on blogs for extra content, google spiders still go over this forum, it must bring in new members? im not SEO expert mind

There is no extra content, just more views from posters posting for signature earnings (I suspect this is why theymos allows campaigns, to inflate ad views). I could be wrong.

Character counts plays no role. I've seen several members (recently Hazir: https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/hazir-252562, sorry for singling out, there are many others in every campaign) who post long posts which are mostly fluff.

Something like (example only):

Example topic: Where will you see Bitcoin in 10 years?

The topic has already received 20+ pages of replies.

Example reply: I sincerely believe, in my honest opinion, that people will continue using BTC at an accelerating rate due to the benefits it brings forward to society and how it can free us from greedy corporations and central authorities. I believe we will see a huge increase in the number of people that use Bitcoin once developing nations hear about it's advances; but only once they have the adequate infrastructure.

---

Now that reply is completely useless, it is full of fluff and made for the sole reason to increase a user's post count. It is spam, especially when 20+ of those are made daily. Such a post does not need any knowledge whatsoever to be posted (often common knowledge about Bitcoin is regurgitated for adding to the post count).

Even posts that seem to be 'constructive' are sometimes (often with high posters in signature campaigns); useless spam posts. Hope that makes sense.

Another point is how much extra traffic are signature campaigns bringing into the forum currently - due to extra content, i think now would be a very bad time for any changes, i'd fear for the forum.

Some people just get enrolled in a campaign and post in threads with range starting from a few word to 2 lines at most! We all have done this (maybe not just for the sake of getting extra money for signature) but some people enrolled in the campaign just have majority of their posts with a few words and one liners (two liners in max). So a good move for both dadice and bit-x would be to maintain the criteria of certain number of characters like Bitmixer forevery post. Bitmixer has the limit of 75 characters per post or the enrolled  memebers wont get paid Same can be done by bit-x and dadice and in order to discourage spams, the number of character limit can be increased for the enrolled members who are found to be "signature spamming"

There are only around (at most) 400 members actively participating in signature campaigns (just an educated guess).

If signature campaigns are removed or get extremely strict, the forum will still continue as it did before (think of all the service announcements, service discussions, good trading, lending, and gambling). Of course the forum would slow down, but not to a point of 'death', to a point of normality.

The Bit-X and DaDice campaigns need to be tough on people, I will play my part.

Having been here when the campaigns first popped up and became huge (PD comes to mind), there has been such a huge decline in the signal-to-noise ratio on this forum. I used to find topics and discussions that were meaningful, insightful and interesting - but now a lot of the posts are just pure blather and unengaging. There was a stage when I could have a long debate in threads, now I make a point and no one bothers to reply, instead spouting the same old crap time and time again meaning that nothing new interesting emerges.

From a forum standpoint, I think it might have been too late to change things back. Most of the old guard have left - and probably won't come back (except from time to time) even with the removal of signature campaigns. Furthermore, without signature campaigns I can guarantee that a majority of posting would stop (which would be good for the signal-to-noise ratio as only actually relevant stuff would be posted) but the forum would probably slowly die.

Yup agree on that, bitcoin is @ a low point right now the last thing we need is another hit to the community.  If there is to be a change in the future please make it during a price bubble surge.

If signature campaigns were to be banned, I believe the forum would change a lot.

Whatever you do, even kill all signature campaigns, nothing will help, this forum had changed, yes, it's not that readable as before and full of useless comments, too many people who is not posting for what they want to say, they post for boosting up post counts.

A lot of old Bitcoiners left, this situations is particularly marked in Chinese section. In the past, you can read lots of high quality discussion thread in Chinese section, people talks for what they‘re interested, they really do, and you will be glad to come this forum and join discussion. But now, (In Chinese section) useless craps is everywhere, actually you would find the forum is not that readable as before.

I am happy with the higher quality posts users. There are a few users though who need to improve or will be kicked out and banned.

What about another approach by rewarding quality like dadice does?

The moment I do something to lower spam, I get retaliatory feedback and a user (leen93) pestering me on all threads of mine plus the Bit-X thread (which I do not own).

Doesn't matter, I'll continue.

Just an update on my user checking. I've gotten a list of 25 or so users who will be looked into more and be either kicked, kicked and banned or warned sternly. The warning is for the best of that bunch.

Talking about the avatar: it doesn't take up the entire space.

That's exactly what I'm talking about. After some point the forum gets flooded and disaster strikes the campaign. Honestly I hate the fact that in some threads almost all of the people who replied have the same Bit-x signature. Even if I had something constructive to say, and no I'm not saying that my posts are better than anyone else's (possibly in some cases), I don't reply to that particular thread.
Some have been exponentially increasing their posting rate, and who knows how many have made additional accounts to abuse this.
Since you're staff, may I ask why the bans have slowed down or is that me? I remember that in the past campaigns there were a lot.

Campaigns should probably be limited or capped at something because at one point it becomes overkill and hard to manage. I've been reporting users to marco and he has been kicking most of them off but he and other campaign managers should be doing more to stop spam from happening in the first place or quickly put a stop to it when it happens. Having nearly 200 people on your campaign is impossible to police effectively so you should either cap it to an amount that you can handle or hire someone who will keep an eye on posters. It's in your interest to get on top of things because there wont be any campaigns to manage if this keeps up not to mention having spam participants on your campaign makes both you and the business look bad. I think bit-x has achieved its goal of having its brand spread across the forum and has enough advertisers now and definitely doesn't need any more. It's probably time to have a clean out and only accept new users after you've checked the quality of their posts. If every campaign manager checked the user's posts first before they're accepted poor quality posters would have nowhere to go and be forced to up their game or be outcast.

That's not entirely true, the DaDice avatar design competition is still ongoing and there will be the option of having partial dadice avatars as you can see here:  https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.11092737


I chose to have a full avatar, if it does become a major issue (which I doubt) I'd be more than happy to have just a partial or non dadice avatar.

I said avatars.

I wonder why you never capped the amount of people that can join the campaign? It is all good until it reaches one point at which it starts going the wrong way.
I haven't noticed anyone that was doing crazy amounts of posts get kicked. Although I wonder why bans are less frequent now? Remember back with PD people were getting banned in 'waves'.

I for one am making sure that avatar ads are as unobtrusive as possible. Another campaign, DaDice, is having users are wear the same, entire-avatar, avatar which is kind of annoying I can imagine. Currently only 2 or so users have a full size Bit-X avatar, yet they are custom made so as to not cause confusion. For the time being, I will only purchase a handful of enrolled users' avatars (even if I bought all 190 of them, it would be like mine, not the entire avatar which is annoying I agree).

Which why I said I am going to be tightening up my spam tolerance.

It may seem like not much has changed but that is due to the campaign having over 190 members.

I have removed several members recently due to their posts, it'll continue until you see a difference.

Actually not at all.
Now, members even 'rent' their avatar for some Bitcoin-dust...

What's next, one wonders.

Actually you're doing nothing in comparison to the people who ran signature campaigns in the past. If someone with improper English does nearly 40 posts and it's barely passed noon something is wrong.
Has anyone ever seen a reputable member whose posts are excellent (e.g. Danny) post 30 or 40 posts a day? I think not.

Bit-x provided a great offer here but it's going downside now. I've actually started ignoring people from the same signature campaign. There are too many members and the spam tolerance is high. Have you even removed anyone from the campaign yet?
Remember the time when Stunna filtered out the majority because their posts were bad? I miss those times.

I'm going to be tightening up my spam tolerance even more with my campaign, which probably the most prominent one (the reason I'm going to do this)

It is a free market. Plus the minimization of the forum is going to allow and encourage a lot of people to get involved in bitcoin that would not otherwise be involved in bitcoin. It will also provide a venue that new bitcoin related businesses can advertise and increase the size of their business.
I would disagree. At least in a way that you are implying what the moderators are doing. When someone says that someone is the "thought police" they are generally saying that people who disagree with a certain viewpoint will be punished.

The way the moderation of the forum could possibly be considered to be "thought police" is that people who say things without thinking are punished.

I think it is absurd that anyone would expect their hands to be held to protect them from getting scammed. If you can see that something is a scam then you should not invest and warn others to not invest.

In most cases people are banned and posts are deleted when it is very clear their post has no value and are not contributing to the conversation.
I find it ironic that you bring this up the line after you are criticizing the forum for judging people based on their contribution to a thread.

The above described kind of people do get banned.

I hope you realize that the report to moderator button is for when a post/thread is either breaking the rules or is in the incorrect location. If someone is making a large number of shitposts then it would probably be better if you opened a thread here about them or sent a PM to a global mod or BadBear.

This isn't a discussion forum anymore, it's just a place for spammers to congregate and spam their ads at each other. That and scams, ponzis, mlm's, and faucets. It's kinda sad seeing what it's become, and even mods participate, support, and even run some of the pay for spam campaigns.

First and foremost - the reason you are on the DannyHamilton Ignore List is you are part of the suspect list i am suggesting. 

Also, you failed to include in your quote "Note: There are some people on my ignore list for reasons other than sig ad spam."

So you are either sig ad spam or other according to him...

While i'm not saying you're one of the worst offenders, your join date and post amount makes you a perfect example of a questionable subject.   

I applaud and respect you for posting on this topic, it is quite good of you to support spam.  I look forward to your rival campaign participants or maybe even one or several of your alts having a great writing class response as well. 

Great news! Thanks for the head's up! 

well... i have some news for you: avatars working again and new forum soon *tm*

I don't think your going to see any moderating changes soon....the avatar functionality of this forum has been broken for years. That must be a super complicated fix. Too bad Satoshi's not around anymore. I bet he could figure it out. lol

i'd love if sig campaigns would be no longer allowed on this forum. it would remove soo many posts!
the problem is how to detect them

my sig is no sig-ad btw (i developed and host it myself)

I still think that is internal forum question and discussion, but let the mod decide this. You did not answer me at all. Instead you are showing list of ignored users created man who blacklisted EVERY user with signature even remotely resembling campaign's signature.
Quote from Danny Hamilton:

"Generally you get on my ignore list in one of the following 8 ways:

You have participated in a sig ad campaign
You have had a sig that I mistakenly thought was part of a sig ad campaign"

And you think this is fine to put every member with paid signature in the same bag? Even Moderators have them...

EDIT for HAZIR:  "How to make bitcoins by using bitcointalk forum." So now its general bitcoin discussion.


thanks for chiming in.

SEE DannyHamilton Ignore List,
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/my-personal-ignore-list-973843

First and foremost - this topic should be in Meta section, as it is hardly a 'Bitcoin' discussion but rather 'why we have so many spam' discussion type. And I will tell you this - go check Reddit crypto subforum and check if they have only great 'super constructive posts' written by highly skilled professional coders and economists. Because they have no signatures, avatars nor any other form of monetization incorporated on their forum.
Yet amount of spam, idiotic posts, crazy theories, stupid people and trolls are overwhelming there. May I ask you why? Nobody is paying posters of Reddit anything after all...

The monetization of the forum has destroyed the very essence of what discussion is about.

Having moderators judge what is and isn't a "substantial post" is like the thought police.

Banning members by judging their contribution to the subjects rather than removing members and posts from running ponzi scams and hyip is absurd.

There are many members here who have turned into professional re-writers.  Topics are filled with them.  Long post with nothing in it.  They post hundreds of spam posts each weekly.  All seem to say something but, if you look at them as a whole, it's the same song and dance over and over reworded to bypass your spam filter.

Signatures aren't going anywhere but i ask you to pay attention and read. 

CLICK THE "REPORT TO MODERATOR" button.  It only takes a second.

If you click it they will come!