Author

Topic: Bitcoin talk could fix the spam in one move....REMOVE SIGNATURE...Right?? (Read 1497 times)

hero member
Activity: 1232
Merit: 528
Community Manager: ETN
But wait.... I should get paid to post lol

Clearly we are going to have millions of useless posts if we pay people to make posts.

If you have to get paid to post here........ LMFAO

Go play Axie Infinity... You can make $20-$30 a day
sr. member
Activity: 1232
Merit: 379
After all, its not necessary for every one to join signature campaigns and get paid, truthfully, it causes shit posting by users just to be on a payment quota, but that's true. Come to look at the advantage of noise making on the forum, have you ever thought of that? Do you really think the product being advertise would get their traffic? That's Why theymos welcome newbies at all times because it keeps the forum going.
Before the merit system was implemented, almost 70% of those users are shit posters, right? so you can observe that merit system filters them out gradually, therefore posting for getting paid is a win win situation also for the product promoting.
legendary
Activity: 2114
Merit: 2248
Playgram - The Telegram Casino
<...>
This is true, less traffic would lead to less revenue, but unlike Facebook and some other medias, this platform is not primarily geared towards generating revenue as it has a pretty decent reserve. The forum provides a platform for Bitcoin enthusiasts to discuss useful topics, so revenue (while significant) is probably not the reason why the admins still allow signature campaigns to be run.
Theymos has also hinted that other means of generating revenue can be devised in the event that it becomes necessary.
hero member
Activity: 2492
Merit: 542
You are definitely right OP great idea as usual "BUT" do you think removing signature in this forum will not affect traffic? Im afraid this will be a huge impact like 50% or more this will drop exponentially and Its not good in every website less traffic, less visitor and noise means less revenue for a website like this you know what Im sayin? Just like some social media websites for example facebook if this website will remove fake accounts, pages, etc because they generate huge amount of traffic, Im sure big loss in revenue of Facebook.     
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 3061
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Well it's been discussed many a time before and threads like this always pop up every once in a while and I as well others usually offer the same suggestions over and over. You could of course restrict signatures to certain ranks and that would help a bit, but it wouldn't be a solution to the problem as there are thousands of highly ranked accounts that do make low quality posts and will continue to do so. I also think it would be harsh to blanket ban lower-ranked members when there will be great posters among them and to get a high rank is hard and also very time consuming (unless we offered more donator ranks which some with the benefits of higher ranks). I think a much fairer solution would be just to enforce the signature campaign guidelines and punish poorly run campaigns and the problem would likely solve itself. Do you ban roads because there's a minority of idiots who want to joyride and go 150MPH everywhere?  No, you punish the idiots who are causing the problem. The forum is in a bad way because there's absolutely no ramifications for doing a bad job but once there is people will quickly learn that it's not acceptable to do a shoddy job.
I understand what you mean, but am just trying to out suggestions out there.

I think, maybe, instead of waiting for admins to enforce signature guidelines, why don't you update your thread in the services board? If any manager is personally responsible for spreading more span, he should be banned for a day first, then 3, then a week, etc.

I know it won't curb down spam, and its hard to find each and every single manager that allows their campaign participants to spam, but this is still a possibility considering the options available out here which isn't alot.

Well, it's not my job and if theymos doesn't care to do anything about it I'm not going to waste time trying to stop a sinking ship as it's futile and only going to cause me stress and headaches and waste time and money for me. We actually need his involvement to enforce the guidelines because signatures need to be blacklisted if campaigns and/or their managers are banned because the campaigns will continue on without them as they can just as easily run them off site. Bans might only make them do less to clean their campaign up as well so it could be counter-productive and this is why we need theymos's input unless he can delegate signature blacklists to others.
legendary
Activity: 2383
Merit: 1551
dogs are cute.
Well it's been discussed many a time before and threads like this always pop up every once in a while and I as well others usually offer the same suggestions over and over. You could of course restrict signatures to certain ranks and that would help a bit, but it wouldn't be a solution to the problem as there are thousands of highly ranked accounts that do make low quality posts and will continue to do so. I also think it would be harsh to blanket ban lower-ranked members when there will be great posters among them and to get a high rank is hard and also very time consuming (unless we offered more donator ranks which some with the benefits of higher ranks). I think a much fairer solution would be just to enforce the signature campaign guidelines and punish poorly run campaigns and the problem would likely solve itself. Do you ban roads because there's a minority of idiots who want to joyride and go 150MPH everywhere?  No, you punish the idiots who are causing the problem. The forum is in a bad way because there's absolutely no ramifications for doing a bad job but once there is people will quickly learn that it's not acceptable to do a shoddy job.
I understand what you mean, but am just trying to out suggestions out there.

I think, maybe, instead of waiting for admins to enforce signature guidelines, why don't you update your thread in the services board? If any manager is personally responsible for spreading more span, he should be banned for a day first, then 3, then a week, etc.

I know it won't curb down spam, and its hard to find each and every single manager that allows their campaign participants to spam, but this is still a possibility considering the options available out here which isn't alot.
legendary
Activity: 3248
Merit: 1160
Playbet.io - Crypto Casino and Sportsbook
I don't think that's a good solution, what made the forum popular is the number of visitors and members going in the forum and signature campaign has a good contribution to that, maybe if you see there's still a lot of spam, adding more mods could be a solution.

If cryptotalk are dying to get forum members by paying people to post in their forum, I guess there's no way bitcointalk would remove the signature, otherwise there will be a drastic change of the number of visitors. I maybe bias as I am currently wearing a signature now, but I believe there's another solution to that, which is a win-win for the forum and the members.
hero member
Activity: 2660
Merit: 651
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Spammer operates in different ways and removing the signature campaign won't stop that. However, the campaign manager doesn't support spam, they have reduced the number of weekly posts and if we're to talk about the campaign that encourages spammer I will say it the bounty campaign 
hero member
Activity: 1232
Merit: 528
Community Manager: ETN
Just out of curiosity OP, could you tell us how many spam reports you've made in the last 3 months?

Looks like OP has left the building. No answer to my question whatsoever, but I wouldn't have expected anything else tbh...


Oh, Hey..... BItvest.... I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess you want to keep making post and receiving money for them.... And without people like yourself being paid to post.... Then the forum would die


..... How am I doing?

hero member
Activity: 2128
Merit: 532
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Sure, more traffic usually means more revenue but I'm not sure it would drop that much because this is still the number one place for bitcoin discussion even if all the spammers left. Also, theymos doesn't seem to care that much about the ads or money and has said before that he has thought about removing adverts and also that the forum doesn't need any more money. Personally I think it would be silly to forgo the ad spot but it's still there at least.

I agree. Best to capitalize on ad spots because they would never run out of style.

That's why we see millionaires always finding ways to get richer Smiley
legendary
Activity: 1582
Merit: 1059
nutildah-III / NFT2021-04-01
Just out of curiosity OP, could you tell us how many spam reports you've made in the last 3 months?

Looks like OP has left the building. No answer to my question whatsoever, but I wouldn't have expected anything else tbh...

He's been offline 3 days. Not everyone is on the forum everyday. Why should he or anyone else have to spend their time reporting thousands of shitposts for absolutely nothing it return? I'd argue that staff shouldn't have to deal with it anyway as there's already a shitload of stuff to deal with without being unpaid campaign managers as well. What you're saying is like asking someone who's complaining about people littering in their area then asking that person how much time they spend picking it up. People shouldn't have to clean up others shit, and especially when other people are getting paid to shit all over the place.

Point taken.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 3061
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Just out of curiosity OP, could you tell us how many spam reports you've made in the last 3 months?

Looks like OP has left the building. No answer to my question whatsoever, but I wouldn't have expected anything else tbh...

He's been offline 3 days. Not everyone is on the forum everyday. Why should he or anyone else have to spend their time reporting thousands of shitposts for absolutely nothing it return? I'd argue that staff shouldn't have to deal with it anyway as there's already a shitload of stuff to deal with without being unpaid campaign managers as well. What you're saying is like asking someone who's complaining about people littering in their area then asking that person how much time they spend picking it up. People shouldn't have to clean up others shit, and especially when other people are getting paid to shit all over the place.
legendary
Activity: 1582
Merit: 1059
nutildah-III / NFT2021-04-01
Just out of curiosity OP, could you tell us how many spam reports you've made in the last 3 months?

Looks like OP has left the building. No answer to my question whatsoever, but I wouldn't have expected anything else tbh...
legendary
Activity: 2310
Merit: 2073
I think this question will be open for a very long time. But in my opinion, banning signatures is not a solution to the problem of shitposting and spam because the advertiser can pay the same money to spammers and you will still get the advertising information only a little differently. Today there are forums where signatures are banned, but on them the problem of shitposting and spam is still relevant.
legendary
Activity: 1582
Merit: 1059
nutildah-III / NFT2021-04-01
(...)
A handful of campaign managers might be strict and are doing their job adequately, but it wouldn't matter if 99% of them were doing so as if one campaign comes along and does nothing and causes 99% of the spam then it drowns out everything else. I don't think a lot of the campaign managers are doing a great job either. Even some of the 'reputable' ones seem to be doing a poor job and don't really care how many campaigns they take on as long as they're getting paid and that of course means the quality of posts deteriorates when they don't really have enough time to run them properly.

Exactly. People are proposing a thousand new ideas to fight spam, but we don't need more rules. All necessary rules are there, but they aren't applied. Should we apply them, we could probably even decrease the number of rules, as long as people are complying with the remaining ones.

If I understand well, some of these campaign managers' only task is counting posts once a week. If that's the case, I'm not quite sure why people are writing down stuff like this, as if keeping the boards clean would be such a horrible task in return for their income:

I guess they just get disheartened by looking at the number of spammy posts, they just give up.

(...) Also cleaning up hundreds of post will be an impossible task for the bounty manager as he is only one person. (...)

Well, if it's indeed such a hard job for one person, I invite all campaign managers to contact me and make a proposition for me to work as a spam manager for their campaign. I'm not expensive, but I'll only work after payment of an advance. Roll Eyes
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 3061
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They are already paying members to join and if they're via the ad spot, to theymos.

It's a win-win on both sides. More traffic to the site means higher exposure to the ad moneh.

Sure, more traffic usually means more revenue but I'm not sure it would drop that much because this is still the number one place for bitcoin discussion even if all the spammers left. Also, theymos doesn't seem to care that much about the ads or money and has said before that he has thought about removing adverts and also that the forum doesn't need any more money. Personally I think it would be silly to forgo the ad spot but it's still there at least.

While I agree with you partially, I don't think it will likely prevent spam. Spammers gonna spam. Ads are a part of the life now, you see ads everywhere. Be it on YouTube, Spotify, streets etc. It's annoying to have them but at the same time they make platforms free and smooth. I think if Bitcoin Signature campaigns have to pay a small fee for running their campaigns to bitcointalk forum (I think they already do, but not sure) that will generate revenue for the site to be well maintained. There are already rules for spamming, and it gets you suspended or banned. And spammers are also kicked from sig campaigns as well by managers Smiley
Spamer will not disappear from this forum they will continue to exist but if caught breaking the rules then they will be banned from this forum or even in the signature campaign being promoted, I see the manager is now getting tougher in selecting participants for part of the campaign therefore spamer will never participate in any advertisement because it is considered bad for everyone.

Now the campaign is growing with you, the promotion in this forum may be due to a pretty good increase so that many platforms are willing to open opportunities for those who want to join the campaign.

A handful of campaign managers might be strict and are doing their job adequately, but it wouldn't matter if 99% of them were doing so as if one campaign comes along and does nothing and causes 99% of the spam then it drowns out everything else. I don't think a lot of the campaign managers are doing a great job either. Even some of the 'reputable' ones seem to be doing a poor job and don't really care how many campaigns they take on as long as they're getting paid and that of course means the quality of posts deteriorates when they don't really have enough time to run them properly.
hero member
Activity: 2856
Merit: 644
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While I agree with you partially, I don't think it will likely prevent spam. Spammers gonna spam. Ads are a part of the life now, you see ads everywhere. Be it on YouTube, Spotify, streets etc. It's annoying to have them but at the same time they make platforms free and smooth. I think if Bitcoin Signature campaigns have to pay a small fee for running their campaigns to bitcointalk forum (I think they already do, but not sure) that will generate revenue for the site to be well maintained. There are already rules for spamming, and it gets you suspended or banned. And spammers are also kicked from sig campaigns as well by managers Smiley
Spamer will not disappear from this forum they will continue to exist but if caught breaking the rules then they will be banned from this forum or even in the signature campaign being promoted, I see the manager is now getting tougher in selecting participants for part of the campaign therefore spamer will never participate in any advertisement because it is considered bad for everyone.

Now the campaign is growing with you, the promotion in this forum may be due to a pretty good increase so that many platforms are willing to open opportunities for those who want to join the campaign.
hero member
Activity: 2128
Merit: 532
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While I agree with you partially, I don't think it will likely prevent spam. Spammers gonna spam. Ads are a part of the life now, you see ads everywhere. Be it on YouTube, Spotify, streets etc. It's annoying to have them but at the same time they make platforms free and smooth.

It becomes more of a norm on paid-to platforms. BMF, Mylot, Steemit. Can't avoid that since everyone wants to earn easily.

Quote
I think if Bitcoin Signature campaigns have to pay a small fee for running their campaigns to bitcointalk forum (I think they already do, but not sure) that will generate revenue for the site to be well maintained. There are already rules for spamming, and it gets you suspended or banned. And spammers are also kicked from sig campaigns as well by managers Smiley

They are already paying members to join and if they're via the ad spot, to theymos.

It's a win-win on both sides. More traffic to the site means higher exposure to the ad moneh.
legendary
Activity: 2968
Merit: 3061
Join the world-leading crypto sportsbook NOW!
~~~~~
I don't know if anyone has asked this before, but what do you, or the moderation team think of solving the spam issue(other than the remove signature option which has been the goto-reply for years). Like why not make signatures restrictive for full members, or above? Or make some boards for full member and above(like Serious Discussion), but with signatures ON instead? How about hosting some sort of contests every week, or some games(like how Among Us is getting insanely popular, forum members could get invited to play).  Or how about expanding bitcointalk more than just as a forum, and exploring the idea of having courses related to bitcoin launched on this forum, or other platforms, and also maybe having a youtube channel as such? I can go on about recommending things, that might potentially increase forum discussions, if said things are implemented right.


Well it's been discussed many a time before and threads like this always pop up every once in a while and I as well others usually offer the same suggestions over and over. You could of course restrict signatures to certain ranks and that would help a bit, but it wouldn't be a solution to the problem as there are thousands of highly ranked accounts that do make low quality posts and will continue to do so. I also think it would be harsh to blanket ban lower-ranked members when there will be great posters among them and to get a high rank is hard and also very time consuming (unless we offered more donator ranks which some with the benefits of higher ranks). I think a much fairer solution would be just to enforce the signature campaign guidelines and punish poorly run campaigns and the problem would likely solve itself. Do you ban roads because there's a minority of idiots who want to joyride and go 150MPH everywhere?  No, you punish the idiots who are causing the problem. The forum is in a bad way because there's absolutely no ramifications for doing a bad job but once there is people will quickly learn that it's not acceptable to do a shoddy job.
full member
Activity: 1022
Merit: 133
While I agree with you partially, I don't think it will likely prevent spam. Spammers gonna spam. Ads are a part of the life now, you see ads everywhere. Be it on YouTube, Spotify, streets etc. It's annoying to have them but at the same time they make platforms free and smooth. I think if Bitcoin Signature campaigns have to pay a small fee for running their campaigns to bitcointalk forum (I think they already do, but not sure) that will generate revenue for the site to be well maintained. There are already rules for spamming, and it gets you suspended or banned. And spammers are also kicked from sig campaigns as well by managers Smiley
legendary
Activity: 2422
Merit: 1083
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BIGGER DOES NOT EQUAL..... BETTER


And in some situations, BIGGER IS 100 PERCENT EQUAL TO ..... BETTER

To be honest with you, I understand your point of view, but am sorry to disagree with you on the basis that signatures should be removed in a bid to fight spam.

Believe me when I tell you that the "getting paid to post" features of this forum have done it far more good than harm, which is why i tell you that bigger equals better when you consider some factors, one of them is COMPETITION.

Do not forget that their are Many other forums out there competing to be what  BTT is today, and all this forums have this same feature "get paid to post", if this feature is scrapped from BTT today, many new projects will have their announcement posted here for the sake of those who still use this forum, their main activities like bounty and airdrop will be held on alt forums cus that where their audience and potential community members are, BTT will loose many members and the so called quality posters included.

One advice I will give you is never to compare yourself with other people, that you have a day job that pays you good and you are comfortable with doesn't mean it's same for everyone, some people mostly in the third world countries don't have jobs and this is what they do to earn a good living.

What I can say concerning spam is instead of BTT scrapping get paid to post, they can rather, as an alternative to scrapping, regulate posts by deleting posts considered as spam and the poster warned not to make such post next time, and if he or she continues to make such posts for a certain period of time, he or she can be banned from the forum... This has been happening here in the background if am not mistaken.

My opinion
legendary
Activity: 1428
Merit: 1166
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IMO, it's not just Signature Campaigns, we also have Bounties such as Twitter which I consider to be giving more spam than usual due to Bounty Hunter's everyday reports. And besides how many of us here has been on a signature campaign and does only spamming all the time? I think most of the Campaign Participants now are quite good to be called a normal user and considered to be a good citizen of the forum compared before when Merit is yet to be introduced.
People are complaining about the annoyance in non-bounty boards and from low quality bounty hunters and their valueless posts.
We should atleast expect theymos to ban signature from those boards if that's really necessary, also as for the managers that doesn't value posts they should also receive some penalties, depends on the amount of spam that they produce I guess, something like warning until they get permanently banned. And maybe we shouldn't let Newbie to Juniors manage campaigns unless they avail copper membership. JMO
hero member
Activity: 2520
Merit: 952
"Also,  the ADs that the site uses for revenue are fine,  and have nothing to do with signature."

How so? No signature campaigns means less traffic to forum and that equals less revenue?
hero member
Activity: 1722
Merit: 801
IMO, it's not just Signature Campaigns, we also have Bounties such as Twitter which I consider to be giving more spam than usual due to Bounty Hunter's everyday reports. And besides how many of us here has been on a signature campaign and does only spamming all the time? I think most of the Campaign Participants now are quite good to be called a normal user and considered to be a good citizen of the forum compared before when Merit is yet to be introduced.
Bounties are hidden boards for bounty hunters and bounty reporters. I almost don't visit bounty boards. People are complaining about the annoyance in non-bounty boards and from low quality bounty hunters and their valueless posts.

Spam and get payments, it only happens with signature campaigns in bounties or low paid signature campaigns that are managed by unprofessional managers.
full member
Activity: 1232
Merit: 186
As a matter of fact, there is a user here that discussed a few months ago which his posts was purely shared link of his social media campaigns.
Well, it's not so hard to look for another one. I mean, there are several members existing here for the sake of their main business only which is posting their social media links — not going anywhere, not interacting with other members Roll Eyes.




And in my opinion, there's no guarantee that this forum will be finally free from spammers even assuming that all money earning opportunities here will be removed. Why? Because at the end of the day, this place is where most crypto enthusiasts gather. It creates a huge traffic thus considered a good place for shilling (a form of spamming) all the projects you can think of.

We can only eradicate spamming if all of us here got the right discipline. However, it was so ideal so I think it won't happen either.
full member
Activity: 868
Merit: 185
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IMO, it's not just Signature Campaigns, we also have Bounties such as Twitter which I consider to be giving more spam than usual due to Bounty Hunter's everyday reports. And besides how many of us here has been on a signature campaign and does only spamming all the time? I think most of the Campaign Participants now are quite good to be called a normal user and considered to be a good citizen of the forum compared before when Merit is yet to be introduced.


Definitely I agree!

There are more spammers in social media campaign than signature campaigns because of their daily reports to the bounties. It is also consider as spamming because there is no content with their post aside from link of their shared posts. We do not discriminate those users who have joined in social media campaigns but I think it is obviously that they are the one that spams the forum. Imagine, a lot of newbie users shared their daily links to the forum that costs too much spamming activity as well. As a matter of fact, there is a user here that discussed a few months ago which his posts was purely shared link of his social media campaigns.
legendary
Activity: 1428
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IMO, it's not just Signature Campaigns, we also have Bounties such as Twitter which I consider to be giving more spam than usual due to Bounty Hunter's everyday reports. And besides how many of us here has been on a signature campaign and does only spamming all the time? I think most of the Campaign Participants now are quite good to be called a normal user and considered to be a good citizen of the forum compared before when Merit is yet to be introduced.

legendary
Activity: 2383
Merit: 1551
dogs are cute.
~~~~~
I don't know if anyone has asked this before, but what do you, or the moderation team think of solving the spam issue(other than the remove signature option which has been the goto-reply for years). Like why not make signatures restrictive for full members, or above? Or make some boards for full member and above(like Serious Discussion), but with signatures ON instead? How about hosting some sort of contests every week, or some games(like how Among Us is getting insanely popular, forum members could get invited to play).  Or how about expanding bitcointalk more than just as a forum, and exploring the idea of having courses related to bitcoin launched on this forum, or other platforms, and also maybe having a youtube channel as such? I can go on about recommending things, that might potentially increase forum discussions, if said things are implemented right.
donator
Activity: 4760
Merit: 4323
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Unfortunately, the spammers have this site by the balls.  Them along with trolls have chased away nearly all legitimate and innovative Bitcoin users leaving mostly spammers & scammers to view advertisements.  Sure, this problem could be solved very simply as you state.  The forum could take over signature ads, have them fairly offered to higher level members, and spam could be heavily targeted instead of paid for by lazy campaign managers.  However, solving this problem would be a massive hit to the user stats of this site and would likely hurt advertising revenue as well as the site's legitimacy in rankings. 

A very tough decision has to be made about whether this site should be useful for Bitcoin users or profitable.  Given mankind's history, I think it's safe to say advertisements will be protected, no matter how scummy or harmful to Bitcoin that direction leads us.

Those saying that there would be almost no posting without signature ads...  No shit.  That's the problem.  There used to be no spam here and nothing but posts about Bitcoin projects.  It was a golden era that has been all but forgotten by this new breed of spam-powered profiteers. 
legendary
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I don't understand at all, after many years, people still complain about signature campaigns, why? What's wrong with it?

I think this thread is a perfect example of what it wrong with them. Did you even read the replies here as there's plenty of comments explaining what is wrong with your arguments and you're just saying the same thing as everyone else is over and over.

First of all bitcointalk is a place where you can discuss about bitcoin, blockchain and crypto related threads.

And you can do that without signatures.

This forum is an insane source of amazing information and of some amazing people.

And it's hidden beneath thousands of shitposters giving out incorrect information or saying the same things reworded dozens if not hundreds of times.

This is a forum where you can post your question about technical thing, economics, etc and get solid answers. What's wrong with signatures? You post here, help people and earn some money.

The problem is obviously the monetised spam. Everyone knows littering is bad, but imagine if someone started to pay others to litter. It would get messy very fast.

Haven't you ever visited any other forum? For example reddit and others? Spams are everywhere, nothing can fix it. Our posts also shouldn't be 100% related to technical staff and PHD degree. It's also communication between users.

And can you imagine how bad reddit or anywhere else would be if somehow they could get get paid for posting there. Paying people to spam just exacerbates the problem ten thousand-fold.

People trade here, do good things. This forum gives new and old businesses a possibility to promote, become popular and start a project in crypto industry. This forum is the great place for this purposes too. Signature campaigns help businesses to spread their message and this helps crypto industry to develop. By using signature campaigns, there were created and promoted a lot of very successful projects that play now the major role in crypto business.

Someone spray painting an advert on the front of your house might be good for their business and spreading the word. Doesn't mean to say we should accept that.

Signature campaigns also drive traffic on this website. I can't believe you haven't seen a high quality posters who put signature in their profile.

That's not the problem with the few high quality posters posting under a signature... The problem is the thousands of other shitposters sullying the discussion and drowning out any useful information.

Let's imagine we removed signatures, what do you think, people won't ever post spam things? Check other forums who don't have signatures, there are still dozens of spam posts.

Again, now imagine someone offered to pay people to post on those forums... what do you think would happen then?

And enough is enough!!! Brain is f***ed by such threads.

Well that's how a lot of people feel when they see the wall-to-wall spam everyone. Everyday I think I've seen every possible permutation possible of gambling threads, then someone will create a thread like Do you gamble on the toilet. Do you gamble drunk. Do you gamble on an aeroplane. Have you every gambled on the toilet of an aeroplane. Have you every gambled on the toilet of an aeroplane whilst being drunk. And the shit threads go on. Are you telling me people would create those threads here or anywhere else if they weren't getting paid to do so? Of course not, they've just run out of possible things to talk about so they come up with any ridiculous thing they can.

Out of all the replies, 64 posts can wear signature (I mean if all the posts were posted by individual users, that would be 64, there are 2 newbies who don't have the right to wear signature.
Now, out of that 64 posts, only 3 didn't have any signature which includes 2 of your posts (OP isn't included). Probably 3 posts have their own signature (Not paid). Rest are paid. Now, would you get such a discussion without the presence of all of the poster here? I doubt. You would get only a few posts.
I guess signature isn't the problem here at all. Problem is the size vs the stuff working for the forum. If theymos employs some more stuff, I guess spam could be easily deleted and spammers could be kicked out of the forum.

But how many of them are saying anything new? Most just seem to be worried about their paycheck disappearing whilst saying the same thing as everyone else.
legendary
Activity: 1554
Merit: 1139
The forum would be relatively quite, thats true but then, one of the criteria for being paid in a signature campaign requires your post to be of good quality hence, the decision on either a posts is a spam rests in a managers judgement.
Besides, I don't know the statistics of the forum users involved in signature, if their is an data set available maybe on a monthly bases, please reference me or if there isn't any, it won't be a bad idea to have it in place. In essence, I'm trying to bring to the consciousness of the fact that, with the idea of ranking in place and the criterias required to participate in signatures, coupled with the very few number of users required, it's only a handful of users compared to the entire and very few of this handful could be said to spam the forum.
hero member
Activity: 1232
Merit: 858
I wear a signature so my opinion is biased in this case.
Of course, deleting signatures from the forum will remove the amount of spam to a greater extent. However, this will have a very serious impact on forum attendance.
If you look at signature campaigns, the best posters of this forum participate in campaigns where payments are made weekly in Bitcoins. The bulk of spam comes from signature campaigns, where payment is made in project tokens that cost nothing to their owners. For what is given for free, you can not follow. Therefore, I believe that the best solution would be to ban all campaigns with payment in tokens. Set the rules for acceptable payment in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
This of course would not solve the problem 100%, but it would reduce the amount of spam significantly.
hero member
Activity: 1358
Merit: 851
Out of all the replies, 64 posts can wear signature (I mean if all the posts were posted by individual users, that would be 64, there are 2 newbies who don't have the right to wear signature.
Now, out of that 64 posts, only 3 didn't have any signature which includes 2 of your posts (OP isn't included). Probably 3 posts have their own signature (Not paid). Rest are paid. Now, would you get such a discussion without the presence of all of the poster here? I doubt. You would get only a few posts.
I guess signature isn't the problem here at all. Problem is the size vs the stuff working for the forum. If theymos employs some more stuff, I guess spam could be easily deleted and spammers could be kicked out of the forum.
legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 7340
Farewell, Leo
I agree, too, but isn't there such spam everywhere? Such advertising in the google search engine and even on TV is also a bit of spam ? Only that in a different form. Don't you think so?

Besides, see what is online marketing about ? To a great extent it is spam... Sad
Again, not everyone spam. I don't know what you watch on TV that is spammy. I think that you're trying to tell me that you hate that advertisement exist. I don't know about you, but when I see posts like these I don't consider them as spam.
https://i.imgur.com/6prbnmc.png
https://i.imgur.com/pALME1j.png


The 00's and 10's were times to be a member on a forum. Right now, social media sit on the throne. This may be true only for my country, but I highly doubt. The only forums that have stayed alive are those with the tech problems. Why? Because tech people will always post on such forums. Although, a forum based on a TV-series like harryworld.org becomes a dead forum since you can do the same thing on facebook, with even more people.
hero member
Activity: 2142
Merit: 670
Hire Bitcointalk Camp. Manager @ r7promotions.com
Imagine how GREAT this forum would be if you couldn't get PAID to post!!!
There's nothing wrong with a signature campaign. Not all members who use signatures will create spam posts. In fact, if you know, there are many signature campaigns that require high-quality participants and not shitposters. Signature campaign is one of the promotions of the projects, one of the ways or reasons why people are here.

Remove the signature....PROBLEM SOLVED
Can you guarantee that if members here do not use any signature, there will be no shitposts? No, because it is not the fault of the signature campaigns, but this depends on each member right here. They decide to be a shitposter or good poster.

I know your concern of this forum is good actually, but, we can't force what we have already been doing here to be nonactivated.
hero member
Activity: 2436
Merit: 877

Also,  the ADs that the site uses for revenue are fine,  and have nothing to do with signature.


You should know that people want to give ADs where they see is a lot of traffic. So if you remove the signatures, the traffic of the forum will decrease too and therefore the revenue generation from ads will decrease too. Signatures do not contribute in the direct income of the forum but they do contribute indirectly.
member
Activity: 355
Merit: 45
I stopped here


Imagine how GREAT




Yes, then imagine how people would motivate to make this forum grow. It's getting bigger and bigger u think ?


Signature campaigns exist, because it's cool to exist. Everyone is happy, me that advertise a product and get paid, the owner of the product because I advertise it and the members that click it, chose to click it.
OP, you are right about the part of spamming.


I agree, too, but isn't there such spam everywhere? Such advertising in the google search engine and even on TV is also a bit of spam ? Only that in a different form. Don't you think so?

Besides, see what is online marketing about ? To a great extent it is spam... Sad


The forum era is over.

prove it
legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 7340
Farewell, Leo
Signature campaigns exist, because it's cool to exist. Everyone is happy, me that advertise a product and get paid, the owner of the product because I advertise it and the members that click it, chose to click it.

OP, you are right about the part of spamming. Yes there are some new users that came here just to spam, but not all of us. Actually the spammers are really few comparing those who make high quality posts. If the administrating team desides to continue this, at least for the next years, only good things will happen. How many forums do you believe that will be alive in the '20s?

The forum era is over.
hero member
Activity: 2352
Merit: 905
Metawin.com - Truly the best casino ever
I don't understand at all, after many years, people still complain about signature campaigns, why? What's wrong with it?
First of all bitcointalk is a place where you can discuss about bitcoin, blockchain and crypto related threads. This forum is an insane source of amazing information and of some amazing people. This is a forum where you can post your question about technical thing, economics, etc and get solid answers. What's wrong with signatures? You post here, help people and earn some money.

I wouldn't call myself the highest quality posters but after all, what measures quality of our posts? Haven't you ever visited any other forum? For example reddit and others? Spams are everywhere, nothing can fix it. Our posts also shouldn't be 100% related to technical staff and PHD degree. It's also communication between users.

People trade here, do good things. This forum gives new and old businesses a possibility to promote, become popular and start a project in crypto industry. This forum is the great place for this purposes too. Signature campaigns help businesses to spread their message and this helps crypto industry to develop. By using signature campaigns, there were created and promoted a lot of very successful projects that play now the major role in crypto business.

Signature campaigns also drive traffic on this website. I can't believe you haven't seen a high quality posters who put signature in their profile.

Let's imagine we removed signatures, what do you think, people won't ever post spam things? Check other forums who don't have signatures, there are still dozens of spam posts.

This forum is doing great things, a lot of projects started from there and continue from there. Also I think we shouldn't forget the job of moderators and DT members, they are doing great things against spammers.

And enough is enough!!! Brain is f***ed by such threads.
legendary
Activity: 2450
Merit: 4295
eXch.cx - Automatic crypto Swap Exchange.
When the merit system was introduced it got attack with the reason that only the 'so called elite' will control the system, meriting only those they want to progress on the forum in regards to ranking up but I guess the story today is different. Time changed that mindset, with time too and some little adjustment that of the signature feature could change too. Today we act as if the signature ad feature has been so bad, only taking away from the forum instead of contributing but I can proved to you that campaigs have also had their moment in bettering the forum in some way, it might be small but it does have its impact.

Apart from the fact of gaining merit, you can see users improving their quality of conversation to make their account worth hiring for promotion. They keep up this act to the extent that even when they're not promoting any campaign they still contribute quality posts. Remember the old saying 'fake it until you make it. Well I have seen users done so successfully and today you could point them out as one of those putting in effort into their post making.

The forum banning signature campaigns would be a wrong moved, not saying this just based on the fact that I'm a beneficiary to this feature. They should step in to govern it instead of letting spammers take ownership of the feature. Making campaign owners take responsibility of their participants and suffer any nuisance they cause on the forum would be a great start.
legendary
Activity: 1582
Merit: 1059
nutildah-III / NFT2021-04-01
Just out of curiosity OP, could you tell us how many spam reports you've made in the last 3 months?
legendary
Activity: 3234
Merit: 5637
Blackjack.fun-Free Raffle-Join&Win $50🎲
contraband, it would be really polite to respond constructively to some posts, rather than persistently going in only one direction and advocating some kind of ban. Spam on this forum may be 20% or even less than 3-5 years ago, and if you think someone is a spammer use the report to moderator button or report it directly to his campaign manager.

Merit is a really successful filtering tool, maybe even too aggressive when it comes to ranking progress. So all of your claims are pretty baseless - and I've already written to you that the part of the forum you're in is the most problematic, and maybe signatures should really be banned there.
hero member
Activity: 1876
Merit: 721
Top Crypto Casino

So funny.  Merit was the last try...and banning sigs are next on the chopping block

Sig spam is worse the ever

And no, we don't need to pay people to post... in order to keep this forum alive.

The merit system has reduced a lot of spam, those who used to rank up by posting spam now they have no chance. So if they want to stay in this forum now and rank up, they have no choice but to post good. Without signature, forum traffic will drive in the other direction, because signature makes members more interested in discussing in the forum and prefers to find and share new things.

And if you think a post is spam, you can direct report it to the moderator, so the moderator can take appropriate action on that post.

However, it seems to me that the newbie account spams several times more than the spam from the signature account, whose job is to shilling about a project and bumping ann. So now how to control those spammer accounts?
legendary
Activity: 1582
Merit: 1059
nutildah-III / NFT2021-04-01
(...)
It's really not worse than ever. It's quietened down a lot from a couple of years ago or so when the ICO boom was in full swing and there were also a couple of bitcoin-paying campaigns like Yobit that literally accepted anyone without any sort of verification. Their payouts were even automatic so that obviously lead to a lot of abuse. I still think we should enforce the guidelines and dish out punishments for poorly run campaigns though. With some minimum standards on how campaigns should operate the forum would be a much better place and people can still get paid for doing something they would anyway.

I'm not going to necrobump all of my threads but I agree 100% and wrote about it over 2 years ago and actively contacted bounty managers since then.

Campaign managers (as well as bounty hunters) earn money thanks to these boards. Demanding that they show respect for this forum in return and stop spamming (or kick spammers out of their campaign) is completely normal and logical and imho a simple matter of honor: start your own forum if you want to invent your own rules.
global moderator
Activity: 3990
Merit: 2717
Join the world-leading crypto sportsbook NOW!

So funny.  Merit was the last try...and banning sigs are next on the chopping block

Sig spam is worse the ever

And no, we don't need to pay people to post... in order to keep this forum alive.


It's really not worse than ever. It's quietened down a lot from a couple of years ago or so when the ICO boom was in full swing and there were also a couple of bitcoin-paying campaigns like Yobit that literally accepted anyone without any sort of verification. Their payouts were even automatic so that obviously lead to a lot of abuse. I still think we should enforce the guidelines and dish out punishments for poorly run campaigns though. With some minimum standards on how campaigns should operate the forum would be a much better place and people can still get paid for doing something they would anyway.
hero member
Activity: 1232
Merit: 528
Community Manager: ETN
Also from the forum founder,  theymos

It's too early to get a clear picture, but my thoughts so far:

If the merit system completely fails and I can't think of anything else to replace it, then my next step will probably be to completely remove all ways for forum users to make money from posting (eg. removing signatures entirely).

Maybe there are ways for people who were making money by posting garbage on the forum to make money on other sites with easy bounties, etc. (For example, I don't know if they're actually any good, but https://bountyhive.io is currently advertising on the forum.) But people should use the forum to talk about these money-making ideas, not as a way of making money itself. Once you spend a lot of time here, you may be able to make some money here (which is great!), but you should consider this a far-off hope, not your primary objective.

BTW, if anyone has any ideas for simple things that these ex-nonsense-posters could usefully do to make money, I think that this'd be a good project right now. There are apparently quite a few people who were making money on the forum and could use guidance. Even though their past activities were not good for this forum, I doubt that they are useless in general.



I think after 3 years, and with the PAID POST spam still being a major problem....its time to revisit banning signatures

Like he said, this can be a place to talk about how to make money,  but not the actual place you make it. I agree 100%

BIGGER DOES NOT ALWAYS MEAN BETTER
hero member
Activity: 2268
Merit: 579
Vave.com - Crypto Casino

So funny.  Merit was the last try...and banning sigs are next on the chopping block

Sig spam is worse the ever

And no, we don't need to pay people to post... in order to keep this forum alive.

You make your point but lets see what Theymos said about signature advertisement removal.
What are everyone's ideas for improving post quality?

I have mostly ruled out:

 - Removing signatures or sig ads globally.
 - Requiring payment to wear sig ads.

• More advertisement slots. This forum is badly under-monetised in my opinion and we likely lose hundreds of thousands in lost revenue to signatures and lack of ad slots and visibility.

Second, let look into the purpose of signature advertisement and why crypto related company will continue signature advertisement.
Signature advertisement improve site domain authority and visibility. It also increase site stats through any backlinks tools.
member
Activity: 512
Merit: 44
What if members want to speak without ads and signatures?
- Use Telegram, Discord, private messages  (or any other dead forum)
Telegram and Discords are more spammy. I can not catch flows of discussion on Telegram or Discord especially if I am in a big community. Messages are flooded in a matter of seconds.
~

I agree, replies here in bitcointalk are mostly related to the topic, less spams, less annoying and off-topic posts. I always surf the internet, facebook is one of the most spam social media platform for me, lots of  not related things about the topic. Lots of humors that makes the OP sometimes almost forgotten. But Facebook is still fun to use. The atmosphere  here is much different probably because of the rules of bitciontalk overall and also because of the rules of every sig campaigns. Most signature campaigns avoid spams so sig camps are fine.
hero member
Activity: 2366
Merit: 793
Bitcoin = Financial freedom

So funny.  Merit was the last try...and banning sigs are next on the chopping block

Sig spam is worse the ever

And no, we don't need to pay people to post... in order to keep this forum alive.

Forum is not paying the people! Grin

Of course the next will be remove of signature ban if the spam getting out of the hand but for now it seems we see far less spam compared to previous years so its really a success for the merit system.
legendary
Activity: 1582
Merit: 1059
nutildah-III / NFT2021-04-01
Everything is there to avoid and decrease spam. We have the Merit system in place since 2018 and there's a report button. We have rules and these rules also count for campaign managers.

However:
- Many people who are complaining about spam, seem to believe the report button is only there for decoration. Stop complaining and start reporting.
- I'm still in favor of a system that rewards spam reporters with Merit and that could let those Merit begging Newbies work for the community in order to get Merits.
- Campaign managers need to apply their own rules about "constructive" posts and kick spammers out. They have to stop rewarding people for spamming.

Let's not act as if being paid to post is not great. It's being paid to spam that is unacceptable.
legendary
Activity: 2436
Merit: 1187
I think this forum would be pretty dead without them though.
If the forum would be dead without signatures, it deserves to die. Forums are supposed to be about discussion, not advertising.

absolutely agree
it will living test without signature and if forum will stay ( i sure it will stay ) thats good
legendary
Activity: 2268
Merit: 1379
Fully Regulated Crypto Casino
You want a real talk? This forum will die if no signature campaign available.

Sig campaign means a progressive forum if there are many advertiser comes the more the forum survives and get traffic.

Technically will drive out some traffics if the signature removed. This is surely will happened. But spam will not be gone IMO. This is happening already everywhere and I think theymos would not be waive by this suggestion. This is a forum which is for discussion but lets be real here. Everyone would agree that if signature would be removed something will definitely change here.

Likewise, this is a forum. If theymos decides to remove all signature activities for the better of thus then I will support. Anyway I doubt it will happened. All of those who are in signature are benefiting from it. Im not sure if this ever happened they will be likely the same as they are providing posts. I bet 80% would slow down and put such effort.
legendary
Activity: 2310
Merit: 4085
Farewell o_e_l_e_o
What if members want to speak without ads and signatures?
- Use Telegram, Discord, private messages  (or any other dead forum)
Telegram and Discords are more spammy. I can not catch flows of discussion on Telegram or Discord especially if I am in a big community. Messages are flooded in a matter of seconds.

If you see spam and scam on the forum, I don't argue with you about it. However, spam and scam are more popular on Telegram, Discords, it is the point.

If you want to have secret and self-destroyed conversation, it is ok to use Telegram. Remember it is a risky method because you rely on Telegram's responsibility to protect your privacy. In terms of serious private information, it is best if you keep them offline, talk in person is better than talk in secret chats on any platform.

Dead forums: They are dead so where a place to have meaningful discussion to learn from and to discuss with others. No benefit to join any dead signature-, avatar-free forums.
legendary
Activity: 3654
Merit: 8909
https://bpip.org
So funny.  Merit was the last try...and banning sigs are next on the chopping block

Sig spam is worse the ever

And no, we don't need to pay people to post... in order to keep this forum alive.

If the forum is popular it will attract spammers - if not via signature campaigns then by shitbumping and other activities. Arguably the cost of entry into the hallowed ground of signature spamming is already quite high - you need 100 merits to be able to carry a signature that's worth something. At one point a lot more high-rank users were being banned than new ones were ranking up. Not sure if that's still true but there was and still is a lot of effort being put into cleaning it up so calling signature spam "worse the [sic] ever" is probably incorrect.
 
hero member
Activity: 1232
Merit: 528
Community Manager: ETN

So funny.  Merit was the last try...and banning sigs are next on the chopping block

Sig spam is worse the ever

And no, we don't need to pay people to post... in order to keep this forum alive.
full member
Activity: 686
Merit: 125
The forum has enough opportunities to combat spam and shitposting.
We need to develop the community and do more projects that bring people together.
If spammers and unscrupulous advertisers attack the forum, then the forum is still alive and popular.
I agree this is not all about signature campaigns or project promoted instead this is all about the orientation of what a certain member should do. We can change by re-orienting other users to act as a member of the forum should be and to reprimand users that are not following or obeying the rules and regulations. It could be done because there are many members here wanting some change especially in spamming, shitposting and doing fraud activities. I think this will be manage over a period of time by doing campaign and awareness here in the forum.
legendary
Activity: 1932
Merit: 4602
Buy on Amazon with Crypto
The forum has enough opportunities to combat spam and shitposting.
We need to develop the community and do more projects that bring people together.
If spammers and unscrupulous advertisers attack the forum, then the forum is still alive and popular.
jr. member
Activity: 39
Merit: 8
Oh, how many times have I heard these opinions that if you remove the signatures, the amount of spam will decrease. And the main source of forum spam is signature carriers.

NO, they are not.

And I don't write from the point of view of signature carriers (I only wear signatures for 3 months), but from the point of view of a reporter, having already sent more than 30000 reports. Most of the garbage is left here by bots-bumpers, newbies.

Hundreds and thousands of garbage useless messages like: good project, good luck, Thank you, etc., endless stream, and those who leave them do not wear signatures. Here you have to fight against bumpers and newbies bots, not those who wear signatures, that's where the real garbage message problem is.

Having forbidden signatures, the bumpers will also stay here and will continue to flood the forum with spam and off-top, only without signatures at all it will bend.

Com-coming from the functional  shitposter who spammed up  the forum with copypaste content. Cheesy
legendary
Activity: 2212
Merit: 7064
Just my two satoshi cents here.
There are different levels of spam and it is true that some of that is produced by farmers with many accounts that spam forum with 'empty' posts without any meaning, but majority of spam is produced by trolls aka altaccounts from mental patients, scammers with fake ann and malicious files, fake newbies asking fake questions, merit hunters, etc.

What can I do about it?
- First I will NOT complain like some old boring granma.
- I will report to moderators all posts I consider a spam.
- I can propose changes in forum that will reduce spam.
- I can write in Serious discussion.
- I can work more on making my Local board better and cleaner (WE NEED NEW MODERATOR).

What can moderators do?
- Better manager Ban and Unban  (I see some geniune members being banned for 1 mistake, and others with proven multiple ban evasions receive Unban gifts  Tongue)

What if members want to speak without ads and signatures?
- Use Telegram, Discord, private messages  (or any other dead forum)
member
Activity: 135
Merit: 10
You want a real talk? This forum will die if no signature campaign available.

Sig campaign means a progressive forum if there are many advertiser comes the more the forum survives and get traffic.
legendary
Activity: 2730
Merit: 7065
A lot of the spam here is generated by members who are not even wearing signatures. Newbies posting in the off-topic forums, paid shillers and bumpers (also mostly newbies) who are advertising the next big ICO/IEO or whatever new thing they have come up with. Then you have those posting all over the place hoping to get a merit from someone so that they can start participating in bounties. Most of them don't allow newbie accounts. Social media and bounty reports...

Users who are in good and respectable signature campaigns are trying to uphold a certain standard. They aren't just throwing posts around because in the long-run that would be counter productive to their future engagements.   

 
legendary
Activity: 2408
Merit: 2226
Signature space for rent
The idea is good to prevent spam, but it would be like to cut the head to prevent headaches. I am soo curious to see OP's report history like below image of mine.


So we can realize how sincere OP to prevent spam from the forum. Very few people will log in on the forum for discussion if stop signature campaign. So newbies will be deprived of the constructive discussions. Its true peoples earning from here by posting and it has allowed by the forum admin. The forum will dry like a dead forum, you can simply compare this forum with another forum how they are active. There are many ways to prevent spam where you may keep your role like a report spam post. So banning the signature campaign wouldn't be a solution.
legendary
Activity: 2086
Merit: 1282
Logo Designer ⛨ BSFL Division1
At this point there is only slight difference between yobit's forum and here. (here has sig camps, yobit's place don't)
Not true.
Not every post is posted just to be posted.
Difference is huge with this two forums, and there is also incentive to write post in yobit shitforum that is tracked on their exchange.


legendary
Activity: 3276
Merit: 2442
Instead of removing signatures that would kill the forum and hurt sponsors and casino companies, let's create better rules for campaigns and report or move most spam posts to trash. Maybe we need more moderators for this job or some part time community moderators.
Other thing moderators can do is to remove signatures for spammers, with signature ban.
Theymos wanted all members to earn some Bitcoins, so let's keep this idea alive.

You are forgetting one major issue.

The forum traffic is driven by the signature camps it is not the other way around.

Whatever rule you change to make the forum better won't change a thing. It is beyond the admin's and the mods' power.

How is removing the spam posts fix a thing if almost every post is being posted just to be posted? You'll just reduce the forum traffic.

At this point there is only slight difference between yobit's forum and here. (here has sig camps, yobit's place don't) When the casinos&exchanges decide that they can't extract more money than what they have invested here anymore... something will happen.

legendary
Activity: 2086
Merit: 1282
Logo Designer ⛨ BSFL Division1
Instead of removing signatures that would kill the forum and hurt sponsors and casino companies, let's create better rules for campaigns and report or move most spam posts to trash. Maybe we need more moderators for this job or some part time community moderators.
Other thing moderators can do is to remove signatures for spammers, with signature ban.
Theymos wanted all members to earn some Bitcoins, so let's keep this idea alive.
global moderator
Activity: 3990
Merit: 2717
Join the world-leading crypto sportsbook NOW!
This is where most campaigns get it wrong. Quantity over quality means your signature would likely appear under posts of users spamming the forum who may be ignored by other members, or it would be made in spam mega threads and boards only visited by other spammers, so no promotion is actually being done, as the target audience does not get to see the ad.

They don't get it wrong. They get it quite right actually: More spam = more ad impressions. And May be ignored. How many users do you have ignored? It would be a full time job to ignore every spammer you see here as there's thousands of them and when it's more often than not essentially free for a coin to advertise here it doesn't matter to them - throw as much shit at the wall and see how much sticks. Anything that gets seen is a plus to them. Most of these campaigns really don't care about long-term reputation; they're just pump and dump schemes that want your money and once they have it they will move on to the next thing and rinse and repeat and we're left to clean up their mess which shouldn't be tolerated.

Spam wound not help any genuine project build engagement, it can only be useful to scammers looking to attract unsuspecting newbies to their HYIP projects like we saw with Cryptotalk/Yobit.

Spam is effective as it's all about getting your name and brand out there which signature campaigns do very well.

Overall, removing signatures would only dissuade genuine projects from advertising on the forum

It wouldn't. They would probably just buy forum ad slots instead.

actual spammers would always find a way to jump through hoops to cheat the system. Although, there would be far less engagement to attract them without signatures.

There would be no hoop to jump through as if signatures went then so would 99% of the spammers who are only here to earn from them as they would have no interest being here otherwise. The people who force themselves to post just for payment wouldn't bother and that means once a question has been answered you wouldn't get dozens of replies stating the same or countless threads about every possible permeation of how you gamble: do you gamble on the toilet, do you gamble on Christmas, do you gamble whilst you gamble etc.

I think this forum would be pretty dead without them though.
If the forum would be dead without signatures, it deserves to die. Forums are supposed to be about discussion, not advertising.

Well I don't disagree. The forum would still tick over, but I wouldn't be surprised if at least 80% of traffic goes. You could argue that may or may not be a good thing. Certainly the only people who are here to earn would leave so you would know who genuinely does have an interest in crypto.
legendary
Activity: 2240
Merit: 3150
₿uy / $ell ..oeleo ;(
Then we will see who are real bitcoin enthusiasts and who are here only for the ... >



Source of the image: Internet.

For me it doesn't really matter if the signatures are gone or not, maybe then I'll need to close my SpamBuster club as the spam will drop drastically I suppose. 
legendary
Activity: 4542
Merit: 3393
Vile Vixen and Miss Bitcointalk 2021-2023
I think this forum would be pretty dead without them though.
If the forum would be dead without signatures, it deserves to die. Forums are supposed to be about discussion, not advertising.
hero member
Activity: 2520
Merit: 952
Don't bother going in altcoin discussion, or ignore the topic once it has reached couple pages of replies as after that there is literal spam (in most cases).
legendary
Activity: 3234
Merit: 1375
Slava Ukraini!
Oh shit, here we go again. It was asked multiple times to remove signatures, but there is no signs that theymos is going to do it.
Yeah, signature campaigns cause some problems, I like how @mindrust called it - fake converstations. There is a lot of such conversations where users posting only to get paid. But now situation here isn't bad, compared with things we had before merit system. Then forum was really terrible
But I don't think that forum without signature campaigns would become perfect. It would be pretty much dead, compared with what we have now. I don't want Bitcointalk with only few active geeks. Now most forum members wear paid signatures, including some staff and biggest contributors. I doubt that they would leave Bitcointalk if signatures would be removed, but I imagine that their activity would reduce significantly. I don't think that we want to loose our most valuable members.
And signature campaigns have positive effect for Bitcoin economics, just don't know how significant it's. Bitcoin business advertise here, they get customers from Bitcointalk. Users earn Bitcoin, spend it, use advertised websites. Bitcointalk get traffic and sells ad spots, revenue is used to run website and pay staff. All involved parts get benefits.
legendary
Activity: 3276
Merit: 2442

Remove the signature....PROBLEM SOLVED

am I wrong?
You are wrong.

Remove the signatures and Nobody would post here. That's a bigger problem.

There isn't much to talk about anyways. Price? It goes up, it goes down. Tech? Nothing new is happening. Scams? There are plenty as always.

Sig Camps came to this forum because there used to be happening real conversions and discussions. When the tech was new and there was something to talk about.

Now there are mostly fake conversions and discussions but sig camps still stay.
legendary
Activity: 3290
Merit: 16489
Thick-Skinned Gang Leader and Golden Feather 2021
Yeah, it would certainly stop 100% of the signature spam. I think this forum would be pretty dead without them though.
Even worse: the backlink spam and bounty "promotion" spam would just continue.

Quote
I've long said signature campaigns could actually help improve the forum but only if campaigns are run properly and bad ones are banned and even banished from the forum.
People need to feel the "pressure" from "watching eyes" to keep their post quality up. A good start would be to ban all campaigns that pay anything else than Bitcoin, so there's a real cost for advertising in signatures, and thus a motivation for campaign "managers" to actually manage their campaign.

That being said, I am obviously biased Tongue But I've also been fighting spam for quite a while now.
sr. member
Activity: 2380
Merit: 366
  • theymos are welcome newbies and would prefer to give people opportunities to earn money here

While newbies are always welcome, theymos does not PREFER to give people the opportunity to earn money. Of course theymos is very much comfortable and probably happy with people in the forum earning money out of their participation in discussions, but PREFER is not the right word. Theymos does not care about the users not earning money at all if that means the forum is going to become worthless and would die because of it.
legendary
Activity: 3528
Merit: 7005
Top Crypto Casino
No, removing signature campaigns from the forum would be a horrible idea--I suspect bitcointalk would be dead, at least relative to the amount of traffic and threads it generates now, and I'd hate to see that happen.

Also, not all members who wear advertising in their signature are shitposters.  In fact, some of the best are in the Chipmixer campaign.  And yes, if Theymos decided to remove advertising in signatures right now, the shitposting/spam issue would probably be solved instantly--but at too high a cost IMO, and I'm pretty sure that's why he hasn't considered doing it.

The problem isn't even as bad as it used to be before the merit system kicked off, so I'm not even sure why OP is resurrecting this old idea that's been proposed before.  Not only spam, but traffic in general has dropped dramatically this year, so I don't think removing signature advertising would be a great idea.
legendary
Activity: 3234
Merit: 5637
Blackjack.fun-Free Raffle-Join&Win $50🎲
Remove the signature....PROBLEM SOLVED
am I wrong?

Instead of going in the direction of a total ban, each spam should be dealt with individually - and the responsibility for that lies with each of us who have the ability to report every post we consider spam, just as every campaign manager has the option not to pay for such posts or hire such user/s.

Since you mostly participate in the discussion in Alternate cryptocurrencies maybe the problem in that part of the forum is much bigger as far as spam is concerned than in some other boards? I personally do not visit that part of the forum, and many members ignore it - and as far as I know most of the signature campaigns that pay in BTC exclude that part of the forum in their rules.

I don’t know where were you with your proposal during 2015 or in the years after until some order was introduced? Today's situation regarding signature spam is incomparably better than then, so anyone who has been active on the forum in the past 5 years can see it.

legendary
Activity: 2870
Merit: 7490
Crypto Swap Exchange
Imagine how GREAT this forum would be if you couldn't get PAID to post!!!

I can't imagine how "great" it is when the forum still filled with
1. People who shill certain project
2. Bot which spam website url to increase their SEO
3. People who bump thread with multiple account
4. All kinds of troll
hero member
Activity: 2870
Merit: 594
It will be a big loss not just in revenue but in total traffic. We all know that the forum have "satoshi" stamp on it and he used this forum in the beginning, however it has evolved, then signature campaign introduce, gain a lot of traffic and then we have project adverts being paid. But with the expansion comes the shit posting and campaigns that really lower the quality of posts. So it's really on the hands of campaign managers. One thing to note though that merit system was introduce, it somewhat put a breaks on bounty campaigns that generally accepts everyone without checking their posting habits and qualities. But if Theymos removed the signature campaigns, this forum will be a complete dead to be honest.
legendary
Activity: 2114
Merit: 2248
Playgram - The Telegram Casino
when there's no motive to do that they're not going to waste time and money policing themselves when as much spam as possible baring their signature is beneficial to them.
This is where most campaigns get it wrong. Quantity over quality means your signature would likely appear under posts of users spamming the forum who may be ignored by other members, or it would be made in spam mega threads and boards only visited by other spammers, so no promotion is actually being done, as the target audience does not get to see the ad.
Spam wound not help any genuine project build engagement, it can only be useful to scammers looking to attract unsuspecting newbies to their HYIP projects like we saw with Cryptotalk/Yobit.

Overall, removing signatures would only dissuade genuine projects from advertising on the forum, actual spammers would always find a way to jump through hoops to cheat the system. Although, there would be far less engagement to attract them without signatures.
global moderator
Activity: 3990
Merit: 2717
Join the world-leading crypto sportsbook NOW!
Yeah, it would certainly stop 100% of the signature spam. I think this forum would be pretty dead without them though. I just wish we would implement the Signature Campaign guidelines. I've long said signature campaigns could actually help improve the forum but only if campaigns are run properly and bad ones are banned and even banished from the forum. There's a lot of greedy and lazy campaigns that come here and only want to promote themselves as much as they can and when there's no repercussions for those campaigns they do what they want and that's very destructive to the forum. If they started getting bans then they'd so something about their campaigns but when there's no motive to do that they're not going to waste time and money policing themselves when as much spam as possible baring their signature is beneficial to them.
legendary
Activity: 2310
Merit: 4085
Farewell o_e_l_e_o
1 The owner of this site has mentioned before somewhere that he may remove signature campaigns at some point if they become a problem.
Here
What are everyone's ideas for improving post quality?

I have mostly ruled out:

- Removing signatures or sig ads globally.
 - Requiring payment to wear sig ads.
 - Banning account sales.
Fortunately, merit system works as theymos and the community expected. Later, the bump changes improve things better.

Quote
2 Rank doesn't stop people from spamming and any rank can spam. If campaigns accept Juniors or Members getting 1-10 merit isn't hard. There's also a lot of older accounts that ranked up before the system that spam even when they're Hero or Legend.
Spamming is still there (and can be confirmed when you visit patrol page) but it is improved in non-altcoin boards.

Recent weeks, I've seen some easier merit giveaways and honestly I don't like that but in reality spammers won't be able to go up too high in ranks.

Quote
3 Disabling signatures or avatars doesn't remove the spam. It's still there just without the advertisement which still ruins discussion.
As said, spam posts cover some boards and you can personally put those boards in your Ignore preferenced boards. Advertisements don't ruin discussions, spammers do.
full member
Activity: 686
Merit: 125
Not really necessary to remove the signature for this can add forum activity just like it did way back when merit system was no yet implemented. The scammers, fraud people and phishing site are around are the only reason that led to destroy the user's trust in the forum and left. We are already in low numbers of active users base on this live statistics.
image loading...


As we all know that bounty hunters have great role not only promoting the project but also inviting other people to join here in the forum and explore about cryptocurrency that could interest them and eventually will join especially in investment where mostly projects do rely the source of funds coming from the crowd. This is why I do not consider removing of signature for it is the only way that the forum has been active with. Actually we are heading already to a better forum after the implementation of merit system. If we will going to check the bitcointalk forum livecount created by @BlackHatCoiner in his post I created the Bitcointalk Stats Live Counter then we can see that out of 2.8 M registered users only few are actually online. Maybe some still doing shitposts but probably this is the ideal number of users that are always present wanting to get involve in cryptocurrency here in the forum.

So, I think the spam and shit posts that are still present are from those old users that are now inactive leaving their shits here in the forum. The best suggestion you can make is to remove all the posts from those inactive users and we will going to a bigger improvement in the forum. We can give them enough time to warn them in their inactivity and then deletes their posts if they are no longer active in the forum or it would be much easier delete account.
hero member
Activity: 976
Merit: 575
Cryptophile at large
It would stop signature spam for sure. Not trolls or people shilling their projects.

It will not happen for 3 reasons at least:
  • theymos are welcome newbies and would prefer to give people opportunities to earn money here
  • The forum has solutions to reduce spam, and effects from spam advertisements, prevent spammers rank up to high positions.
  • Members on their sides, can disable both avatar and signature in their profile settings.

1 The owner of this site has mentioned before somewhere that he may remove signature campaigns at some point if they become a problem.
2 Rank doesn't stop people from spamming and any rank can spam. If campaigns accept Juniors or Members getting 1-10 merit isn't hard. There's also a lot of older accounts that ranked up before the system that spam even when they're Hero or Legend.
3 Disabling signatures or avatars doesn't remove the spam. It's still there just without the advertisement which still ruins discussion.
legendary
Activity: 2310
Merit: 4085
Farewell o_e_l_e_o
It will not happen for 3 reasons at least:
  • theymos are welcome newbies and would prefer to give people opportunities to earn money here
  • The forum has solutions to reduce spam, and effects from spam advertisements, prevent spammers rank up to high positions.
  • Members on their sides, can disable both avatar and signature in their profile settings.

A lot of people come here primarily looking to make money. The forum administration is very happy that people are able to use the forum in order to better themselves; indeed, one of the reasons for Bitcoin's creation was to break the artificial barriers which prevent so many people around the world from attaining prosperity. However, if your attempts to make money conflict with the forum's primary goal of enabling discussion, then you are swimming upstream, and you will not be sucessful in the end.

If you view the forum as some sort of "job" where you complete some basic tasks and get paid, then you will almost certainly be disappointed, and the forum administration will not be sympathetic. If you do make money using the forum, then it will be through innovation and entrepreneurship, not any sort of mindless busywork.

The forum has a long history and signature was disabled in the past. Back in 2017 and 2018, a spam endemic on the forum and community request together lead to the implementation of merit system (on 24th Jan 2018). About 5 months later (in June 2018), theymos moved further to demote all zero-merit-earned old-era Junior members to Newbies. They only be able to rank up again if earn at least 1 merit.

Next, the bump score changes was implemented to reduce effects from spam advertisements. Bump services was destroyed by bump score.


How to disable signature or avatar for your account?

Profile -- Look and Layout Preferences -- Choose one or two following options:
  • Don't show users' avatars.
  • Don't show users' signatures.
sr. member
Activity: 1330
Merit: 326
Lets be honest. This forum is popular for sharing of crypto knowledge plus signature campaigns and bounty projects promotions. With all of these, this will help the forum community  become productive. Let's say we removed signature campaigns, will this really make the forum  less  spam? Of course not.

Why don't we just improve sharing ideas, replying in useful comments (it doesnt matter if it's long or not as long as reply makes sense and could be helpful). And come to think of it,  crypto promotions comes at btt forum first. Not only that, I myself can prove that this forum helped me a lot when it come with trading tips and techniques.
legendary
Activity: 2128
Merit: 1775
Remove the signature....PROBLEM SOLVED
am I wrong?
It is not a solution, spam is not on sig, even if the signature is in this forum or not in this forum, if someone is into the profession to send spam, it keeps happening.

The main purpose of this forum is to discuss crypto / Bitcoin, while crypto / Bitcoin and others related to Blockchain, cryptocurrency, wallet, coins, markets, exchanges, trading and so on, can only be seen and obtained through (signature), if all of that is not in this forum and deleted, so what is this forum for, what is this forum for only discussing personal matters here, worse will happen.

If your idea applies in this forum, maybe, you make a post yourself or speak yourself in this forum, I am sure of that.

Spam depends on the person himself, it has nothing to do with the signature, quite a lot of members use sig in this forum, but they are very professional and educated, make this forum more advanced, safe and thriving.
hero member
Activity: 1316
Merit: 503

Can someone please tell me... how having 90% of the comments only being made to pad a signature count....a good thing for the forum.

Imagine how GREAT this forum would be if you couldn't get PAID to post!!!

Absolute trash of an idea to have sigs

Why would we want to keep it going?Huh

Remove the signature....PROBLEM SOLVED

am I wrong?
Do you think that this forum only needs to be filled by people with useful quality posts? Have you ever thought about beginners? They do not follow the signature campaign, but their posts' quality is also low compared to someone who is already a full member or a senior member.
hero member
Activity: 1470
Merit: 555
dont be greedy
the existence of a signature campaign that pays a person for completing their mission, has two distinct effects. The first is the risk of people who only think about money and money, so they will consciously write something in this forum without any educational purpose. They only think about the number of letters, the number of words and the number of their posts with the aim of getting a stake at the end of the week. Meanwhile, the existence of the Signature campaign also has a positive impact on forum users who have better than average post quality. They will be more enthusiastic in writing something useful.

In fact, since the merit rules were established, this has reduced most spammers from completing the task of the Signature campaign, where the important layer after the Administrator is the bounty manager. A bounty manager must be able to choose participants to have good quality posts by maximizing the existence of the merit feature in this forum. So, the decision to delete Signature is not the right decision to do at this time. Because the signature campaign is innocent, but the real problem is forum users who have a money goal without educating friends.

We don't need to destroy a car, if only the wheels are damaged.
sr. member
Activity: 554
Merit: 271
removing signature does not mean it will reduce spam in posts. signature is only used for promotion. many new accounts always do spam create trash topic.
Imagine how GREAT this forum would be if you couldn't get PAID to post!!!
Otherwise. This forum will be silent and the traffic will reduce.
sr. member
Activity: 2380
Merit: 366
It is a good thing because it increases the forum's traffic. Other than that, it also encourages users to participate in discussions. Threads with latest topics are created, users are informed and updated, they try to make a research and contribute their own opinion, etc. That is somehow partly due to the fact that they are paid to post. Visitors are also offered with new posts to read on a daily or even hourly basis.

If what you want will be implemented, my guess is that this forum will become eerily silent. The vibrant discussion would also be significantly reduced or probably gone.
full member
Activity: 868
Merit: 185
Roobet supporter and player!

Can someone please tell me... how having 90% of the comments only being made to pad a signature count....a good thing for the forum.

Imagine how GREAT this forum would be if you couldn't get PAID to post!!!

Absolute trash of an idea to have sigs

Why would we want to keep it going?Huh

Remove the signature....PROBLEM SOLVED

am I wrong?
Let us assume that there is no signature in this forum and no other opportunity at all. Do you think that it ease the spamming activity when there are good quality poster will be gone in forum? There are a lot of content creator which also want to be paid by posting in this forum, they pursue to create such a helpful thread because the campaign they have joined required to make good posts. I frankly saying that many of us want to be paid in posting in this forum, opportunity drives everybody to make a better post. However, there are such spammers who don`t want to think when they are posting. And this low quality poster should be disposed. How? By mentioning them or by reporting them in moderators. You should not cite a rule which will affect everyone, remove the few sands in grains but don`t throw it all.
hero member
Activity: 2660
Merit: 551
I will quote Theymos for and see how it goes to you:

So he himself is not against making money out of this community with those signature campaigns, specially good members who made quality post and add something to the discussion.

It's too early to get a clear picture, but my thoughts so far:

First, most people complaining about merit are constantly posting garbage, and should not rank-up. The forum is not a welfare system; you don't run through a few hoops and then get paid for doing something that nobody actually wants. I like that good forum members can make money, especially when said forum members are in poorer countries and this is a major opportunity for them. I very much do not want to destroy the sig-ad/airdrop/bounty "industry". But I am not going to tolerate people posting garbage upon garbage. If the merit system completely fails and I can't think of anything else to replace it, then my next step will probably be to completely remove all ways for forum users to make money from posting (eg. removing signatures entirely).

Maybe there are ways for people who were making money by posting garbage on the forum to make money on other sites with easy bounties, etc. (For example, I don't know if they're actually any good, but https://bountyhive.io is currently advertising on the forum.) But people should use the forum to talk about these money-making ideas, not as a way of making money itself. Once you spend a lot of time here, you may be able to make some money here (which is great!), but you should consider this a far-off hope, not your primary objective.

BTW, if anyone has any ideas for simple things that these ex-nonsense-posters could usefully do to make money, I think that this'd be a good project right now. There are apparently quite a few people who were making money on the forum and could use guidance. Even though their past activities were not good for this forum, I doubt that they are useless in general.



Merit awards may be too spotty/uneven currently, though it's still too early to say. In addition to continuously adding more sources, if things could still use improvement in this regard in a couple of months, I may do something like decay old sMerit and unused source merit and randomly redistribute the decayed merit. How the random distribution would work would magnify past merit -- so perhaps you would get an increased chance of winning extra merit for every post you've made which has at least 1 merit, but certainly you would not get any extra merit if none of your posts was ever merited.

Merit sales, transfers to aliases, back-and-forth trading, etc. are not much of an issue. All illegitimate merit will decay, and will account for a tiny and very expensive fraction of the total merit economy. It's basically a rounding error; fight it where convenient, but waste no sleep over it.

I think that actmyname has been too hasty with some of his negatives, but I haven't had time to look carefully enough into it to justify making forceful changes. I did exclude actmyname from my trust list, so another DT1 could remove him from the default trust network by doing the same.
sr. member
Activity: 1638
Merit: 339
I think yeah, but remove the signatures is not a solution, because signatures is one of many ways that makes this forum can be growth.
Can not be denied that many people join here because of the signatures, signature remove means people will not making a post, and traffic website will be reduced so much, it's not something expected
newbie
Activity: 20
Merit: 9
1.  You are right in that it would remove a lot of spam from people that otherwise wouldn't post
2.  The site's traffic would be reduced by so much
legendary
Activity: 2576
Merit: 1655
It's not that easy, almost all the traffic of this website comes from advertisement of signature campaigns. I  said signature campaigns and not bounties in alt section wherein the problem originates with low post quality and scams. And this forum needs sig campaigns or at least ads because there is where Theymos generates money to maintain this community. Removing sig campaign not that solution to the problem here.
full member
Activity: 2086
Merit: 193
The moderator are doing their best to ban those low value post so if you’re just spamming here for sure time will come and you will experience to get banned. Signature campaign is a traditional way of advertising here in the forum and beside, not all spammer are wearing signature so I don’t think it will work, there’s other option for sure.
hero member
Activity: 1470
Merit: 504
It might be true but not because a user is enrolled to signature campaign it does mean that his post was just to comply in completing the signature or his post is non sense I can see a lot of users who enrolled to signature campaigns but still participating seriously in discussion and not just posting to complete their signatures.
full member
Activity: 1890
Merit: 101
~snip
No matter what you think of it this way, signature campaigns are a form of marketing and have been around for a long time.

By the way, you are wrong discussed this in the Altcoin discussion thread. Better move it to the Meta thread.
hero member
Activity: 2128
Merit: 530
PredX - AI-Powered Prediction Market

Can someone please tell me... how having 90% of the comments only being made to pad a signature count....a good thing for the forum.

Imagine how GREAT this forum would be if you couldn't get PAID to post!!!

Absolute trash of an idea to have sigs

Why would we want to keep it going?Huh

Remove the signature....PROBLEM SOLVED

am I wrong?

I do understand your concern about the signature spamming the forum and I have thought about this also, the quality of posts on this forum has been greatly diluted, but this solution you proposed is going to have a negative impact on the forum because most of their revenue is from ads, and advertisers use this metrics to decide if they want to put their ads here or there. Once the Signature is off ,the number of visitors would dried out and so is the revenue. Also the $10 you think mean nothing to you, is a life saver to some people
hero member
Activity: 1232
Merit: 528
Community Manager: ETN



Can someone please tell me... how having 90% of the comments only being made to pad a signature count....a good thing for the forum.

Imagine how GREAT this forum would be if you couldn't get PAID to post!!!

Absolute trash of an idea to have sigs

Why would we want to keep it going?Huh

Remove the signature....PROBLEM SOLVED

am I wrong?


EDIT: I love how 90% of you say "there wouldn't be any posts" if we got rid of the signature spammers.
"it would be very quiet" etc.

I wholeheartedly disagree.  There are plenty of quality posters here. 

The noise is all you hear.  It's so bad...that you are convinced thats all there is lol

Also,  the ADs that the site uses for revenue are fine,  and have nothing to do with signature.

I know people need money... But we can't pay people to post and expect a good forum.

BIGGER DOES NOT EQUAL..... BETTER

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