Topic: Ban all the signature campaign (Read 1603 times)

Votes can easily be manipulated by alts. On the other hand, theymos used the system for the proposed change to DefaultTrust.


Call me naive, but I think this problem could be solved by those running the campaigns alone.


If thats the focus, yes. If you post to earn, this might very well be where we are heading. Id like to think that people here post to post and appreciate the coins they can get for something they would do anyway. As someone who "whored" out their signature since the very beginning, I always felt that this discourages me from posting bullshit. I have written way more posts than I posted.

This is also where I think campaign manager can solve this. Instead of just accepting anyone and weed out the spammers later (or never), they could take some time to read the post history of someone applying. I know this is a buttload of work, but this might very well what keeps them their jobs. Without signature campaigns there is no need for those managing them.


I have BadBears suggestion in mind here. I dont think the "hide all" button is a solution either. I think it would lead to lower prices. If certain signatures or certain features can easily be filtered there is less incentive to pay for a signature and thus less incentive to post bullshit for a few satoshi.

I think it would be interesting to make a poll and see whether a majority of users favor a ban or not. I'm guessing they wouldn't, since most people have a financial incentive to keep the current system in place.

Reform will only happen if the staff makes an executive decision to do so, despite the fact that the amount of spam this creates should be disturbing to all users. I'm honestly surprised by how little this bothers people, there is no question that an increasingly large amount of posts are being made by people who are being paid to do so. Paying people to post inevitably leads to a level of discourse that is inane and disingenuous, ask yourself why anyone would want to join and stay a member of a forum like that. Giving users the option to hide signatures would not fix this problem, since the problem is the low quality posts people make to display these ads, not the ads themselves.

One thing I will say in favor of sig campaigns is that they give accounts value. People here are desperate for easy BTC, and sig campaigns provide a decent source of income. People are less likely to try and scam now that they have another option to make some BTC. Those who would otherwise try and scam can just sell their accounts if they no longer care about their reputation, which is a good thing for the forum. This is an unintended consequence of sig campaigns, but it is worth mentioning.

I dont think this should be given by the forum. If you want to run a campaign that is borderline promoting spam, has plenty participants banned for spam including the manager, that sheds some bad light on the service in question. From what is possible today a bot will not be able to detect spam. They can help count posts maybe if you want to exclude certain sections and give you some sort of summary. In the end however a human has to decide whether someone is spamming or not. If the campaign manager will not do it, BadBear will. IMHO a campaign manager should do everything in their power to avoid that BadBear has to act.
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I do check as many users as I possibly can for spam and kick/ban them if they spam heavily.

I also encourage anyone to send user reports my way and I'll make sure to deal with them swiftly.

I think now I understood what SaltySpitoon said. I was actually telling that instead of the manager posting in public(creating a thread), he can target specific people and pay for renting their signature.

Yes, I think even 1 report is enough.


Exactly. That's what I said. Forum should ban bots and force campaigns to use a human for checking posts. I have to study on explaining things.

Advertising PMs will get reported. There have been a few people trying to advertise their services via PM and they have been banned very swiftly. AFAIK a few reports are enough to have someone look into it.


I dont think this should be given by the forum. If you want to run a campaign that is borderline promoting spam, has plenty participants banned for spam including the manager, that sheds some bad light on the service in question. From what is possible today a bot will not be able to detect spam. They can help count posts maybe if you want to exclude certain sections and give you some sort of summary. In the end however a human has to decide whether someone is spamming or not. If the campaign manager will not do it, BadBear will. IMHO a campaign manager should do everything in their power to avoid that BadBear has to act.

Thank you for your response.

If Admins check inboxes, then it will be hard but if neither admins check the inbox nor the users report them, it is hard to ban. AFAIK Global Mods can only see PMs if they are reported. So it will get away. Correct me if I am wrong.


I meant bots for checking posts made by enrollees(eg: Bit-X, Bitmixer). Instead if a human is checking, the rules they enforced can be more effective and also if the manager is a good person, he may report too. I think it will help to reduce spam.

I am aware of that thread, however, that's all we've got for now, possibly until the new forum software comes into play.

I am aware of people putting addresses, links to PGP keys etc. etc., but right now 99% of people are wearing paid signatures(Including me, and you)

The signature might contain useful information. This is especially true for signatures of those not participating in a campaign. E.g. BadBear and others link to their PGP key's. Hiding all signatures would also hide this information.

I like the idea of limiting certain aspects of a signature that are typcially "earned" by rank. E.g. background color, color in general, font size etc. I also am very much in favor of BadBears suggestion[1] of selective removal of certain signatures. If everyone could easily maintain a list that excludes certain signatures no one would have to be annoyed. This will certainly reduce the prices for paid signatures, but if you think about it the prices are very good anyway. Essentially you get coins for something you would do anway.


[1] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/signature-changes-985516

People get banned because of spamming, not because they wear signatures, or post more.

(Or you can ban campaign, ban activity, ban member levels, why not simply ban the user who keeps spamming? that is also more fair.)

If you're genuinely annoyed by the signatures people are wearing, go to this link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;sa=theme

And tick the box "Don't show users' signatures".

Well, I guess discussing the discussion itself is a no-no in most intellectual circles since it obviously shows a paucity of arguments/ability to discuss anything worthwhile.

30 to 40 or even 80 posts in a day isn't unlikely. That's not the issue but rather the quality of those 50 posts.

If Advertising campaigns tried moving to PM, all of their members would be banned pretty quickly, and the managers as well I'd imagine. PM spam is much harder to get away with than posting spam. There are also far less warnings with PM spam.

Placing a limit on post count doesn't really work, since like I said there are some people who can post large amounts of high quality posts. Banning spammers is what everyone is working on now, and I dont think there is a huge problem with bots. Moderators tend to catch them pretty quickly, far before they could apply for an advertising signature.

I don't like banning signature campaigns and also, even if we ban, it can only be banned public campaigns, you can also start a campaign by sending PMs to users.

IMHO it is better to impose rules on signature campaigns than banning them. A few rules I like to see is

• Limit maximum post count.
• Banning spammers from campaign.
• No bots, only humans for checking.

there is nothing wrong with the sig campaigns, the problem is the users taking advantage of it and posting spammy/insubstantial post to earn coins

Not a very good train of logic.

Would it make sense to ban all users/trading since there are plentiful amounts of scammers? No, discretion is used.

Signature campaigns can coexist along with productive posting. The solution is to monitor for spam which the mods do quite well.

Let's ban knives, knives are killing people, I'm not against all knives only the sharp ones!

I don't think that signature campaigns encourage spam. They simply encourage posting more. This in the end results in spam, but if campaign managers take the initiative to strict up and be careful paying spammers, I'm sure we will all stop.

In addition to reporting someone posting spam to boost their post count for their signature campaign, also consider reporting them to the signature campaign sponsor.  After all, that person should not want to pay for posts that people are not going to see or care about not to mention being associated with spammers.

Most signature sponsors seem to be more and more concerned about spammy posts, that might be more fruitful than trying to get an virtually impossible forum ban.

Good Luck!

If you have a problem with someone posting 30-40 times a day, report it if you believe the quality of the posts are low and spam like. There are some campaigns that run at a very high standards that do not tolerate spam posts, account famers, ect, specifically Luckybit. I'm sure there are others. The problem I see is pay per post campaigns that do not have a set monthly pay rate. Usually those warrant the more low quality posts. It's really up to campaign managers to moderate that. The forum moderators can only do so much to deal with the spammers, but I see the campaigns can cut out the problem at its source by enforcing strict posting rules and a monthly pay rate.