Topic: Altcoin Discussion section can change name to Trash discussion (Read 449 times)

At this point, disabling signature on this section would be fastest way, even though the spammer simply move to another section.
Maybe delete mega thread/move mega thread to trash can every few days would be effective since the spammer won't get paid and wasting their time.


You just wasting your time, it's only effective on section with many real discussion such as Serious Discussion/Development & Technical Discussion.

If that is how you think it should go, considering the amount of spam, then here is a better suggestion:
Take out a board or two, and change the name of the forum from "bitcointalk.org" to "craptalk.org".
Because it is not only one section that is flooded with these kind of things, but it is almost the whole forum that is under attack right now. Name one section after them, and they will compel you to name another too as there is no stopping for them right now. They just get into a section and don't leave it until it starts bleeding heavily, and then they jump out and run towards another.
This won't stop unless these "spam zombies" die. They will keep spreading, and we will keep getting affected by this if our superhero (theymos) don't come up with some poison to be expelled on them that would vanish them for at least some time.

You are right, most of people never read the topic. Perhaps just see the subject and start spamming. Nothing we can do except report. I am very less active on alt coin or on Bitcoin discussion. Although I visit some time than most of time I used report button. Anyway it's result of signeture, especially Jr. Members. Because most of reply from Jr. Members I have seen ever. That's why it's better option to include Jr. Member to merit system. There should be minimum merit to become Jr.member or disable signeture for them. I can't see other solution at this time.

Of course, trashing them would have been my obvious choice also but since I'm almost 99% sure they won't, maybe at least we could lock them, and keep a better track on what happens on the fresh ones that for sure will pop up like mushrooms in both cases.

 I would love to see all the shitposter them crying over the deleted post like it happened last year (? my memory is fuzzy but I'm sure at one point the board was flooded with users angry about lost posts count and lost bounty), but lately, I'm not expecting much to be done.

A few things:

Not all boards under the altcoin section are infected with spam. From what I have heard, the Altcoin Mining section has less spam than the other altcoin boards, and a lot of good discussions occur there.

And there aren't any guidelines or anything to the topics to be created there. Any topic that has the words like "bounty", "airdrop", and any altcoin gets to be there, and the spam starts to take its course.

1/2(welsh moderates only half the boards there) mods aren't enough for the biggest board in bitcointalk.

Since you have seen the dark side, how badly does that section require additional moderators? And are there any guidelines on what type of posts belong there? The altcoin marketplace has a lot of off-topic threads and they always stay there only,unless reported, which is quite rare(I'd assume).

I don't really care for the reasons behind people reporting. As long as they aren't making alternate accounts, and reporting posts purposely to pad their report count. If they are genuinely reporting posts made by other people, then I don't really care for their motives as it still results in a cleaner forum.

I would prefer no badge at all, and no incentive for reporting. Reporting spam posts can also be abused, and someone already mentioned it. If people really cared about the forum, they won't be needing any incentive.

TBH, I grew tired of reporting posts from Announcements(Altcoins), and  Marketplace(Altcoins). Majority of my reports came from those sections, it's stressful reporting them, and my reports now came from topics that are not suited on a section.

I even sometimes wonder if legit investors dare to visit ICO Ann.

It's better to trash Announcements(Altcoins), and Marketplace(Altcoins). They both attract spammers, and scammers.

@OP, those sections that I mentioned is worthy for the signature you advertise. No offense, but the signature you're wearing attracts spammers here, who the hell in the world could make 42 meaningful posts in a week wearing it?

Most of them could probably just be straight up removed, honestly. Most of them have zero content, and are just rehashed replies. Locking them isn't really saying any worthy discussion, and just means the spammers get to keep their post counts.

You can either be part of the members cleaning the section or completely just ignore the section/s related to Altcoin discussion. If you choose the latter go to your Profile > Ignore Boards Preferences > Check boxes related to the Altcoin Discussion (Including Altcoin Discussions in Local Boards). By doing so you the boards you will check will be completely inaccessible to you, you can't even view them if you click the "Show unread posts since last visit" page which is very helpful as for my personal experience going to that page, you will see that most topics shown are ANN and Bounty threads of Altcoins.

Oh, the marvelous Altcoin Section....

With thousands of unique threads


Invest in Ethereum
Is now a good time to buy Eth?
are you holding your ethereum ?
Should I invest in Ethereum now or wait?
shall i convert my bitcoins to ethereum?
Should I sell or hold my ETH?
Are you surprised at the price of ETH?

And with such unique posts....of course, the required copy paster at the fifth search in the first thread...(already reported)



The only way to clean that area is to lock 99% of the topics and instantly delete any duplicate topic that appears with no mercy

Sadly many discussions of the altcoin area are continually influenced by bumping services that use low rank accounts (reading here on the forum, I do not remember exactly where, we talk about a few hundreds of dollars a month) in addition to this fact, the threads bounties are abused from an infinite number of people who use low ranked accounts to abuse with multiaccount.
The solution to limit this is to limit the altcoin area for people with rank member + or copper.

Just use the report to moderator button as much as you can that is the only way we have for now and I can see that there were lot of similar threads were deleted by the moderators in Altcoin discussion as well.

Can we have a separate board for Altcoin Technical Support & Discussion ?
This was a thread of mine started in April. Some of the members argued that they don't need a Alt Tech Support board(in the sense they don't need a good and healthy discussion to take place in the Alt Section) If they disagree with this, then why should something like a Altcoin Discussion Board exist at first? For the spammers to post some bullshit to complete their weekly criteria?

Alts are really helpful in solving many real world problems which bitcoin cannot. On the other hand, this is not a bitcoin forum! I believe that this forum has evolved into a large cryptocurrency forum!

There are some very common repetitive shit threads which are created at least twice a day for comparing Eth and Bitcoin or some other common alts.
If we really need a good discussion to take place we need to request theymos for the Tech Board or something similar like that and I think it won't happen either. At sometimes I just jump into the 20th-30th page of the board and find real good questions which needs an answer.

Some common bounty threads be like

1. I have X$, in which should I invest (this investment amount may even reach thousands of dollars at times )
2. Will shitcoin beat bitcoin?
3. When will shitcoin moon?
4. When will I become a millionaire?
5. How much have you earned in bounties till now?
6. Job Vs Bounties (Should I leave my job for doing bounties?)

These bounty idiots doesn't even know how a cryptocurrency works and are talking shit in this forum...

Reporting won't solve the problem and there are spams generating endlessly by members now and then. And if the mods lock a mega useless thread, another mega thread is created within seconds.
So, It's better to leave the section untouched to rot and just search for the good threads which are buried in there. Theymos would come to a conclusion, if the board becomes uncontrollable by mods in future.

That's the problem, it is no loss to them if it is Newbie or Jr. Member they can simply start again. I'll still report higher ranked accounts as they will suffer by losing them but it is a waste of time banning the ones they can just replace.

The altcoin discussion section is full of spam, you are right, but if you take a closer look there are a few decent posts.

Unfortunately the good posts are buried very fast by the spam in there. This has been discussed numerous time here as well but a good solution to stopping it is yet to be discovered.

In their defense: altcoins didn't exist when Bitcointalk was created. In my opinion, a healthy (with the emphasis on healthy) altcoin discussion fits this forum perfectly.

but at least their account (spammer) is banned or gets red trust after being reported.

I appreciate applying the badge that will be a motivation for more reporter voluntary.

I think something more important than a badge is required.


The real issue is that after putting effort into reporting, finding plagiarism takes time, it doesn't decrease the spam. After seeing theymos' response to the suggestions put forward it is clear that nothing is going to be done in the near future. That does more to demotivate people from reporting than a badge will fix.

I don't see Altcoin Discussion as a training ground for Bitcointalk. After all, it is Bitcointalk, and not cryptotalk or something along those lines.

That's certainly a case. For a forum this size I would expect there to be more users reporting. But, there isn't that many users that do report. Its always the same users reporting. Again, its understandable because its a real pain in the arse to do, and has no rewards whatsoever at the moment. But, hopefully with the introduction of reporting badges that will change.

Altcoin discussion should be great, but it isn't.  Altcoins are hot and are worth discussing, but unfortunately most of the posters in that section are only doing it to earn money...actually, tokens which are only loosely thought of as 'money'.

Take a look at the campaign I'm in, BlocVehicle.  Altcoin discussion is one of only a few sections they pay for posts in.  I am not criticizing that in any way, and it isn't an inherently a bad thing, but we all know that if a campaign only pays for posts in sections X and Y, sections X and Y will be overwhelmed with sig campaigners writing things you can barely understand.  I don't know what the rest of the campaigns are like, but sig bounties are all about altcoins so that's where the BHs post.

The administrator is being kind in allowing altcoin discussion to exist, and imo it probably shouldn't.  It might be the worst section on the forum as op pointed out.  Maybe the forum needs more reporting of bad posts?  Don't know how active the altcoin mod is, but I have seen some doozies that should have been deleted.

It's nice to see you as a staff mate. Indeed, the problem is that bounty managers weren't professional. They accept spammers and don't really care about the quality. They only care about quantity. I think we've made progress since Lord Theymos approved this suggestion:

Perception is the key word. So many people perceive that section as a junk. Yes to a great degree it is junk but that is the starting point for many people. Every new member who joins bitcointalk forum heads straight to the altcoins section. I see it as the training ground of bitcointalk forum.

Most of the topics there need to be archived/locked or removed entirely. The discussion has long come to an end, but its easy for bounty participants to add a generic post in the thread, and get paid for it. The underlying issue is how easy it is to make an account, and start making money through bounties, because of the low standards of acceptance from altcoins.

It wasn't this bad last year, probably because the market was in a huge bull run, and people actually had promising news and realistic speculation to talk about.  Nowadays everything is in the red and people are just scrambling for the scraps. I wouldn't expect that section to improve until the market does, it seems that they go hand in hand.

It was shitty year or two ago, but now it's indeed trash discussion. Now it's almost impossible to find real conversations there. Pretty much same situation on Bitcoin Discussion board and Economics. It's full of generic shitposts made by signature spammers and bots. And it's getting worse and worse day by day. Worst part of it that mods don't have power to change something here. And according to last post of theymos, there will be no significant changes in near future - it seams that he don't want to add suggested restrictions which may help to increase quality of posts in these boards.

Can say the same on boards: Bitcoin Discussion, Trading discussion and sometimes Economics. We can discuss on bitcoin/altcoins when there is something new but here threads are created everyday, also old threads are bumped everytime. Trading discussion isn't wide but here is the same situation again. Aim is to just grow number of their posts.
To my mind best indicator of spam thread is not only title but replies to view ratio too.

That's the annoying part about it. There is actual worthy discussion there, but it just gets labeled as a trash place, because quite frankly the majority of it is trash. Unfortunately, the amount of trash that is there stops most people from visiting the place, and contributing with good quality content. Therefore, we are just lumbered with low quality posts from low quality members.

The altcoin section has undoubtedly a ton of shit posting but there's a lot of legit discussion there too, you just have to find the good threads. Part of the charm of that section is that you must really go deep in the tons of trash looking for gold, and sometimes you find some people actually talking something of value, even actual devs talking about their projects. It's not fair to call the entire thing trash tho.

This meta section has tons of people trying to recover their account due the massive backlog of unrecovered ones, it's literally filled with it, so similarly, you must search for threads that aren't the same thing a million times. Theymos said that he will fix it soon with an automated recovery system, so that should fix the meta section.

I wouldn't even waste time trying to moderate the altcoin section, this is a bitcoin forum after all. Just keep searching for the good content out there.

Yes, report to the moderator or you can cooperate with [CLUB]The SpamBuster

I doubt there's much you can really do to fix it without just downright over moderation.  All topics will be created again with a different title and spammed with the same responses.  Merit may limit the ranks you get but people will still have to spam their 10-20 posts a week to meet their signature requirements.  It's a battle lost long ago really.

Yeah, there are cascades of spam posts in several discussion threads, where spam posters are copying spam/shitposts from other spammers several pages before.

Just look at patrol. An army of newbie and jr. member accounts spinning posts and articles, the result is nonsense gibberish.

Thats bountytalk, not bitcointalk.

I looked at this section and there are 99% topics/posts repetitive, and people talking about "nothing". if the idea is to be spammers separate there It may be understandable.
Threads like:
Signature Campaign
Bounties
what alt coins worth the invest?
Which is the best Cryptocurrency to invest 2018?
Doing 2 or more ICO facebook campaign?

All of them have tons similar replies I doubt it was anyone reading this.
What to do with topics like these, report to a moderator?