Topic: Account Farmers are the new Ponzis - page 4. (Read 7937 times)

I would be more then happy to donate 2 BTC if I would receive some kind of "supporter" tag and/or if theymos was soliciting donations. However the forum is currently self sufficient and theymos has repeatedly said that the forum is not in need of additional money/donations. 

I think 2 BTC would be more appropriate if the forum was in some kind of need for additional money and it was for something other then to enable signature features.

If signature campaigns were to outright stop (for whatever reason) then the value of accounts would likely crash and the amount of useless posts by people with paid signatures would also decline substantially. I might speculate that the volume of accounts traded might go up as people might be interested in buying accounts at fire-sale prices, hoping that signature campaigns would make a return appearance, giving value to accounts once again.
Right now, based on the various account pricing websites and the auctions that I see, high-level accounts sell for amounts that would allow someone to quickly ROI with signature payments alone. Also many of the signature spammers put very little effort into their "work" of posting. I also have observed many signature spammers decline to "invest" the small amount of time required to even briefly read  a small number of posts in a thread prior to posting nonsense.

(please note that what you had quoted was discussing what was essentially a "fork" of what OgNasty proposed in that people would need to pay a nominal amount in order to "unlock" the signature features of senior members+.)

I think you know very well that most people cannot reasonably describe what to "avoid" in order to avoid potentially receiving negative trust from someone in the DT network. What will "trigger" a negative rating has been greatly expanding in the past several months to well beyond the intended "someone is a scammer, or you strongly believe that someone is a scammer". There is also one member in the DT network that will openly give negative trust because you say something he disagrees with.....however that is off topic here...

Why is that foolish? If you charge an amount that is greater then someone can reasonably expect to earn via their signature over a medium amount of time then no one will pay the "fee" and you are essentially banning signature campaigns.

If you pay 0.05 btc every month on the 1st, then you will be risking that 0.05 btc in the event that you post enough crap so that you get banned.

I don't like this idea however because the amount that people post varies too much as this will be a pittance to some signature advertisers while it would be more then what some signature advertisers will earn in a month, effectively banning signature campaigns for people that do not post very much.

The signature spam problem has been attacked in some ways, with results that I was very impressed with. Take a look at this thread/rule clarification in the off-topic section, and notice how the thread like "how long have you been logged in", "what is your favorite drink", and "what is the last movie you have watched" are no longer active (they actually have been locked. I would also say that Grue's signature ad block script has also helped the problem somewhat, although to somewhat of a lesser extent.

It is true that most of the stuff Slowturtleinc is not a valid reason to leave a negative rating, although I would argue that a good ~16 of the reasons listed essentially are the reason for a negative rating that someone has left that is in the DT network.

As someone who previously assisted with escrowing forum accounts, I can say that the amount of money you will earn from dealing with forum account deals is in no way worth the amount of time required to facilitate these kinds of deals. There were often many concepts that needed to be explained to one or both parties to a transaction, and the amount of details that need to be checked as part of a transaction means that it would often take 15-20 minutes to facilitate a deal that is not disputed, and when you are often receiving your minimum tip/fee of 2-3 dollars, that works out to essentially minimum wage. The primary reason why I was willing to facilitate these deals was to prevent someone from being able to scam via these deals. Although some people believe that account trading is dishonest, I do not believe these people would be happy if someone got scammed just because they tried to buy or sell an account, especially if the person who got scammed was otherwise honest.

The forum is currently self sufficient, and it is self sufficient because it is able to sell advertisements for (far) greater then it's operating expenses. The forum is able to sell advertisements at this price because of the number of page views that it gets. Users with paid signatures often will not participate in the forum (or their participation would be greatly reduced) if it were not for their paid signature. Users with paid signatures are essentially giving the forum additional page views (which allows the forum to sell it's advertisements at a higher price).

I would personally love to see an environment that you describe from when you first joined.

I have seen that kind of behavior take place on reddit a little bit. I am not sure why it does not take place here anymore.

(interestingly enough, I have actually asked one Legendary member for help with a couple of high value trades in the past, solicited a donation address after the help/advise was received and received a message declining a tip/donation).

Why do you think this? If someone is considering to donate money in return for their ability to receive payments to advertise for a third party but has no chance to earn a return on their initial payment + the time/effort they put into their posts that serve as advertisements then they will have zero incentive to donate the money in the first place.

I think that the people who say they receive a "fixed amount" are somewhat misleading others as to the details of their arrangement. As a general rule, the "fixed rate" deals have a minimum number of posts that must be made in order to be eligible for payment, and if this is not true, then advertisers will take into consideration how many posts such person is making on a regular basis when deciding if they wish to continue their arrangement.

I like the concept behind this, however I think some of the specifics should be changed.

If you have 3 active marketplace threads open for one year then you will potentially bump them a total of 1,000 times, and if you forget to delete your old bumps only 2.5% of the time then you will be over the limit.

When I was more active last year, there were some periods when I would average 26 posts per day over a month, however my posts were good enough so that third parties were willing to pay significantly above market prices for the right to advertise on my signature. I believe that there are many other high quality posters that have frequently exceeded 20 posts in a 24 hour period.

Think it is a mix of both and not leaning to far on either side to be fair in addressing why sigs are staying clear. I reference the ponzi issue as it was the last issue and I saw people apolgize out of fear rather then thinking they where right or wrong.
Believe the same applies here and you yourself blew me off by saying some signature users write to much. I read that as go away, am I right?
Would validate my point if so.

No double standards here, I've had 4 posts deleted in the last 24 hours and I'm not in any campaign, what some sig spammers try to do is make long pointless speeches when you can answer questions and reply to stuff in one sentence, I personally find that annoying. Few signature members are in this thread because this is an intelligent discussion, those that can actually understand what we are saying here know that they are guilty and are staying away.

If you want to ding people for spam it should be only fair that older accounts have all their sock puppet accounts tagged as such, otherwise we are dealing with a situation where you are going after people that are late to bitcoin well also allowing them to be mislead by multi accounts.
Having seen people like Luptin leave three word responses and a person with a signature leave quality responses and be accused of spam aslo seems out of wack. Not a personal attack just a obvious member all would know. Its stating you can put little effort into posting as long as you are positioned properly without a signature. Some serious double standards. The lot getting giddy over clamping down are never happy either with one issue! We eliminate signatures and you will reap what you so desire, but I honestly do not think the outcome will be what you expect.
Notice how few signature members are in this thread! Is it because you are right about all of them spamming or more sinister in not wanting to become a target of the chosen elite? Sadly we know the truth and this discussion like those before it will turn into a closed circle jerk for like minds to scream bloody murder at members of the forum.
Signatures this forums version of a red door?

With over 800k accounts currently, even when taking off those that are either lost (due to the owner leaving), will never be sold or those that are banned,
aswell as those that are not (yet) at the age restriction you want to implement, that is hardly a limit to the market.

True, but there would be fewer accounts that are over a year old and they would cost more.

They would just buy an account that is older than one year and spam on that.

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Here's an idea that could work but probably won't happen because of the complexity:

In order to have a signature, an account must be, say, at least full member and the user must give 2BTC to the forum. However, instead of that 2BTC being a donation, it would rather be a security deposit. After the user posts at least 1000 posts over the course of two years, he can get 1.5BTC back, the remaining 0.5BTC becoming a donation. However, in order to get that 1.5BTC back, the user must also not have more than 25 posts deleted over the two years, and no more than 10 instances where more than 20 posts are made in a twenty four hour period. He must also never receive a ban within those two years. Only when these requirements are met can the user receive the 1.5BTC back.

I think this would work to reduce spam, increase the constructiveness of posts, and also maintain traffic for the forum. Users are incentivized to stick around for a few years, and post constructively in order to get their money back.

What about a very simple solution such as not allowing signature space until an account is 1 year old.  If you put a time limit on it rather than an activity limit, then there would be no incentive to spam (until the year is complete).  If a year sounds too long, it could be 6 months.  I think this could deter people that don't want to wait to get a signature.

I was just suggesting to ban TOR / VPN's / Proxies in the MARKETPLACE ONLY as a deterrent to Scammers mainly, but IN ADDITION it would give Theymos and Admins the ability to ban these SCAMMER IP addresses, so I was NOT suggesting they should be released publicly... BUT! IF that ban was implemented in the marketplace? SCAMS & FRAUD WOULD BE REDUCED BIG TIME I BELIEVE! There are a ton of Scammers here that would never even TRY to pull some of the crap they pull without the protection of TOR a VPN or a PROXY at their disposal and YES I understand DEALS go through via PM, but again it seems (again IMO) that MOST scams (not legitimate deals) are STARTED in the marketplace. Again, I was just adding my 2 cents, nothing more. 

P.S. I had NO IDEA the forum charged a 0.2 BTC fee to use TOR, so my bad on that one, that INDEED is a pretty hefty fee. 

Why would the forum ban tor users from the marketplace? That means I will have to be forced to put my public IP at risk just to buy a giftcard?

Its not like tor helps scammers, how often do we catch scammers around here by using their IP address?

A few days ago I made an account on tor and I had to pay something north of 0.2BTC to unlock the account, are you saying even though tor users are forced to pay a fee ( a quite big one), they shouldnt be allowed to post in the marketplace section?

Also, even if members using tor cant post threads in the marketplace you know that alot of deals go through with using just PMs right?

Also, wouldnt they just make a post in a wrong section, have someone report it, and then the mods will move it to marketplace?

Nothing will get reduced, do you honestly beleive that theymos would release the IP addresses of scammers?

Believe it or not, most people dont trust the forum with their IP
The forum has been hacked a few times

The first one that I was in (I think) was Inputs.io in 2013. But:

You'd need to do more research to determine, but Inputs.io would be a nice starting point (I don't think your analysis would be much affected if there was a campaign or two before).


I like OgNasty's suggestions though; they're new. It now comes down to making the administration notice the thread and waiting for feedback.

Beat the Cat, you can not!

TF the scammer started it all AFAIK


Edit: According to him it was not, apparently Butterfly labs was the first one: Here. Can't be sure

Edit 2: Aaaanyways, think this might be one of those topics which get a lot of opinions and contradictions etc, but end up in no way actually changing things. Don't think any more posts to argue further will prove Lauda wrong, the cat never loses the logic battles

Does anyone know when signature campaigns started? I want to compile some stats and make some graphs

That is out of context. The sentence states that if you have not joined with an intent to spam everywhere for money, you will have no reason to leave if we don't have signatures.

I don't have time to gather stats; and the question would be what kind of stats are appropriate for this? The statement was made due to the impression that I have due to reading a lot while posting in addition to reading a lot more when handling reports.

I don't think that is the case. Example: Global moderators tend to earn quite a lot when they're active, yet sometimes they are very inactive (a month or longer). They would not do that if money was a priority.

Even though I'd consider that a small amount (no idea why 90$ would be significant) of money, your statement is correct.

Well they both seem the same.

Well I can disagree with your disagreement for no reason at all, I believe you do have a reason (or stats to prove so) to disagree
Sure the first few months mods will try seeming as if they don't need the share of payments per reports they handle, then they will surely slack off as they are not getting any reward for the unthanked job that they have to do. As for the statement that mods aren't paid or more specifically aren't "on a payroll" I believe you yourself likely receive more than 0.2 BTC(a significant amount) per month, not that I'm complaining as you do deserve the share for the constant spam-handling you do

I don't know honestly, I haven't seem extreme cases of spam going unnoticed by the forum. IMHO, its dramatic stuff even for me

You misunderstood my post; I have never define spam as posting in different sections of the forum. Re-read.

I strongly disagree.

It doesn't really need that either, as moderators are not on any sort of 'payroll'.

The forum might die anyway if spam continues growing like this. Even though I'm not a big fan of OgNasty's pay-for-sig proposal I would still prefer to see it die trying to do something positive than just let it drown in spam.

Spam is also a strong word for posting word for posting in different sections of the forum. Would you call , say Knightdk(who I believe is someone after sho who puts effort in his posts) spamming ? While I agree there are still quite a few persistent multi-account sig farmers who keep abusing campaigns like Bitmixer or Yobit for that matter, for making a small sum of money. The quality of the forum has definitely increased and is being maintained for the last few months and the ones who start spamming are soon reported.

Edit:
While the forum doesn't need money from donators and such, it does need money to sustain the group of moderators, "pay" for the admins and the Global mods(who I believe have a higher "cut" from the ad revenue). As of right now, it is taking ~6 BTC to keep the forum going, per month

That is the problem...  Is this a forum trying to make ad revenue with fraudulent traffic, or a hub of Bitcoin discussion and development?  Since it has been repeated time and again that this forum doesn't need money, I would say the latter.  I would also speculate that it is a very small group of people with an army of alts who benefit from the programs you mention.

Disagree. If you are here for the proper reasons, and not because you want to spam in every part of the forum that you're able to in order to acquire a small sum of money, you have no reason to leave. Even though I'm currently part of a Signature Campaign, I've been trying to get them removed and/or get spam heavily reduced for quite some time now. This forum does not need quantity, it needs quality.