As I mentioned in the other thread, I'm against fines because it is discriminatory. If we are setting a new a rule, it should be the same rule for everyone, regardless of wealth. There shouldn't be an option that allows those more well off to buy themselves out of a punishment.
I probably wouldn't be for it if it was just the fine by itself, but if there's two options: you can either pay the fine or earn the merit then I see no issue in that. If you have a problem with the fine for whatever reason then just earn the merit instead.
Another possibility to earn their signature back would to be make x good reports - this would need to have an additional requirement of >x% accuracy to prevent spamming the report button. Say 5000 reports with >95%?
I think this would be too easy. It would be quite easy to rack up reports given the amount of spam there is here.
If they have been banned signature temporary until they have earned X merit then they can continue to plagiarize and earn that needed merit to lift the ban of signature so this should be moved from the suggestion.
Then they would just be permabanned if they're caught doing the same thing. This is an attempt to give them a second chance. There wouldn't be a third.
What is the difference of a temporary signature ban to an amount of merit they should earn?
Not sure what you mean here.
To be honest, removal of their signature to signature spammers might as well be a permanent ban and most will probably just give up immediately if they can't earn here...
What about spammers who are paid for posting?
They are often stealing posts from other users to bump topics, I doubt that signature ban will stop them.
This is just about plagiarisers really. Other spammers can be dealt in other/the usual ways.
Wasn't aware that was happening. Maybe it should be rolled out officially or give Globals the ability to do it since it's probably not something theymos would have time for.
Temporary signature bans will never work.
They will just create an army of bot accounts that will make the job impossible for moderators, you can ban let's say 1000 accounts a day for 90 or 60 days, they will just create 91000 and once you're done with them the first ones will come back online.
Permanently removing the signature will probably mean for 99.999% the same as a ban.
If this was true then the same would be true for permbans, even more so. There's no other option to pay for your sins here once caught for plagiarising so most will just create a new account anyway. At least they've got the option of earning their signature back or paying a fine for it.