Topic: Define spam and insubstantial posts...... (Read 1559 times)

I dont know. I took a quick glance at the last 5-6 pages of your posts and I didnt see anything problematic. On the other hand its not my opionion that counts in the end



I like to think (because I have no way to know how it actually is) that Staff members get checked same as members. In fact if they would have spammed in the past they probably would have never gotten staff in the first place. On the other hand beeing Staff is not necessary about posting, but more about submitting reports. 


Yes ~2400 (for Sr. IIRC) down to 400 is a big difference. I dont know how many people are effected though. Only a few people post that much AFAIK and those apparently are not a problem as far as the mods are concerned. But its something thats easy to do without much work.


Probably best to just let them sink down and die. I just dont understand why people come here if they do not want to read.


Pretty sure its a troll. 1. is good grammer after all

When the thread get 2 or 3 page long, you can easily find people just glancing the OP before making a reply, and in some extreme case people sometimes just read the thread title only...


LaudaM, I guess the birthday thread you are talking about is https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=663338.0;all and it is finally locked after 1.5 months...

First I'd like to thank you for sharing that link, I have not seen that thread/have completely missed it. I'm rated: OK But bit to much IMG posts that needs to be deducted. Looks like he caught a period of me posting in a few threads with images? I have like 2 images in the last 100 posts (check posting history) and they aren't even 'only posts with images'. Why would they need to be deducted in that case?
Well staff is not that much higher than an user here, but I doubt that a staff member would get on the 'signature bans' watch list when that member is probably among the ones that oversee that list. Isn't that so?
Well I'm not trying to compare just numbers, but judging from the previous limitations (what was it 2 or 3 thousand posts?) the reduction is heavy. The first signature deal that I was with was TF's Inputs.io I believe. I was doing way more than 1k posts and did not watch my posting that much (well I was still new). You're definitely right about those threads, there is even a thread about someones B-Day which has passed long ago yet people keep congratulating him. Shouldn't those posts be marked and removed? I mean if the thread is from June (example, I can't find it right now) and someone posts 'congratulations' in August, he clearly has spend less than a few seconds reading the thread. These kinds of posts do annoy  me a bit and I try to avoid them.
Well judging from his username and the fact that he is new, I'd say that he is trolling. A quality posts is not judged per it's length like you said, nor is 2-3 lines sometimes enough (while in other cases a single line would do just fine).

There had already been some discussion about this, for example:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/question-about-signature-campaigns-definition-of-a-constructive-post-677129

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=652705.20

And if you dig deeper you will find more


And if lots of post by month = spam, then hilariousandco shuld have been nuked months ago. But of course that high number of posts by day  will drag attention to you.

Yes, obvious spam is obvious. Thats not the point here. The point is spam that is not as obvious and might not even be intendet to be spam, but just a certain way of posting.


Ah yes thats another point that I had no mentioned. You have to stay on topic. So a discussion about a Chincilla in the middle of a thread would be off-topic. But again this is handled differently by different mods. E.g. the thread about the PD signature has weekly discussions about "how does acitivity work" or which is the highest paying sig campaign or which other campaign is legit etc. IMHO all of these are off-topic, because they are not specific for that campaign. Yet they do not get deleted. Maybe I should report them again and link here to make it clear why I think they should be removed. It makes no sense to discuss these topics in a thread that has almost 500 pages. Noone is ever going to read pages 100-400 again. But a specific thread in the meta section can be linked to again. Will be read again and the discusion cen be continued if needed.


Well the way I understand Staff (at least at first...) is they are barely more than a user. They still have to report and can only act against noobs (aka nuke them) if the case is clear (which -again- is debatable if thats even possible).


Stunna had to act. If old members like DannyHamilton generally ignore those with a PrimeDice signature and only unignore individually those that have been quoted by someone else and appeared to be at least somewhat smart in a quote you have a problem in your campaign. IMHO limiting to 400 posts is not enough though. The number of participants has to be reduced. Maybe thats why MICRO [1] is publicly discussion postquality.


You cant just compare numbers. Its not possible to judge spam that way. Its the same with the number of words. Sometimes a simple "yes" can be very helpfull.


I think whats missing here is: lot of low quality posts per month. At least thats what I have heard.



You have been here way longer than I have, so suspect this is just a change in policy due to the fact that more people frequent the forum now. Plenty fresh Sr. Members now. There was a big wave of newbies that stayed half a year ago. I was one of them, but I am not the only one. And these waves kept on coming. Not all stay, but some. And of those, some post a lot. Some to "make moneyz", some because they just post a lot, some probably a mixture of both.

There are some threads you probably have seen as well, that just make you want to slap someone. This happens frequently in beginners & help as well as other subboards:

OP What is X?
#1 X is ... (short answer)
#2 X is, because. But you could also understand it like this or that. (long exausting answer)
#3(OP) wow thank you both, now I understand X
#4 X is... (redundant answer, sometimes even bad)
#5 X is...
#6 X is...

this gets worse when the thread hits page 2. You get the feeling that those answering #4,#5,#6 etc. did not read anything but the question. Sometimes they do not even answer the question but post something that is within the general vicinity of the area of the topic. Is that spam? To me it is, its the worst kind of spam. It bumbs a thread that is done and provides nothing new.





[1] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/discussion-about-post-quality-for-primedice-signature-campaign-699744

spamm its about your post really low quality . maybe i guess you should post qualify :
1. good grammer
2. 2 or 3 line
stay on topic.

You need to use common sense and good judgment when determining if something is spam. Posts like "+1" and similar posts are clearly spam unless there is other information in your post, such as why you like the post and/or why you agree.

If something you post has nothing to do with the conversation in the thread, nor anything to do with the original topic then your post is spam.

If you follow these two guidelines then you can avoid having the majority of possibilities of spam posts removed.

There are a lot of issues in regards to that then. What about a staff member with a signature (not pointing fingers, just making an example)? He is then naturally excluded from the watch list and can post however and how much he wants to. I think that there need to be other criteria now (?). Stunna even limited the number of posts to 400 per month. Is posting 400 in 30 days (which is 13.33 a day) really spamming? I mean the posts vary and you can't really judge someone based on 5-10 posts, it's the posting habit that also counts (time between posts?). I was also told that I could be as easily banned without a signature if I were to make a lot of posts per month which is ridiculous. I can remember a time when I was posting over 1k a month without any issues (even though I had much more time then and a signature). One has to watch his posting carefully these days and follow the guidelines as closely as one can.

As the post above yours states:

I too had my account banned for this very reason.  My room-mate (nwfella) went through several of my posts and identified the ones that he considered 'fluff' and after he explained it too me it sort of made sense.  Sure didn't like being banned that's for sure but now I know and as they say knowing is half the battle.

BTW, it would've been nice if I would've received some sort of warning before-hand that my posts where seeming inconsequential but I guess that would probably be nearly impossible to fully automate given that the posts have to be gone through by a real live person.

Insubstantial posts doesn't really rely on word count. Your could write a lot that wasn't really relevant and still insubstantial, and you can also be substantial in a handful of words. It just depends on the context, though lots of short posts with not mucn though gone in to them will probably get you into trouble.


Yeh the banning is essentially your first warning.

AFAIK the first temp ban is considered a warning. It might be a harsh one, but apparently thats the way mods handle the board.

The linked thread is trying to change that, but it is "unofficial" since there will be no official rules. There are several reasons.
#1 It would (according to some mods) make it to easy to find loop holes in those rules and exploit those. I can understand this to a part. Ofc it is not helping to say: you must post at least 17 words or its spam. Most of the spammers/spambots post several hundred words. Its also easy to make a sentence longer, but still have the same meaning. Yet I think vague rules would help.
#2 All the rules are (similar to laws) open to interpretation by the mod that is enforcing the rule. Thus it would not be wise to make the rule to tight.
#3 There are stickies in several parts of the board with rules, yet there has not been a central post. This is partly because not all of the rules apply to all of the boards.

Here [1] is the post where it was stated that paid sigs increase your chance to get banned.
Its -again- not official, since there is no one answer (see the last post [2])


While your posting structure might be similar and you have even more posts/day you do not sell your signature. It makes a big difference.

If you sell your signature consider yourself under constant watch. There have been lengthy discussions if selling the signature should be allowed or not, since it apparently (again "quoting" mods) increases spam. This is a very delicate topic. Allowing paid signatures enables e.g. students or kids to earn some coins which would otherwise be unable to buy or earn them. On the other hand if unchecked it results in spam. Those running the campaigns sometimes can not controll this and rely partly on the mods/staff. Which makes sense, for them the content of the post is less important than the "coverage". The more times the signature is shown the better, no matter what is written above.


[1] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/paid-signatures-increases-likelihood-of-getting-banned-609015
[2] https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.6817350 - I link mprep here, because hilariousandco was not staff at the time of the post

never happend to me but there should be 1-2 warnings before you get temporary banned in my view!

Thanks for the clarification, I can see what you mean however I perhaps would have appreciated a warning beforehand. Or perhaps if there was a topic in a very prominent position on the forum explaining what to be careful of people wouldn't get tripped up when they thought they were within the guidelines.

#1 this should be in meta (its reported, I suspect it will be moved soon)
#2 https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/unofficial-list-of-official-bitcointalkorg-rules-guidelines-faq-703657
while there is no official set of rules, this might give you a hint. If not you might want to post there to improve it, since its still in the works and questions like yours get asked a lot.

#3 its not about the number of words, but whether you contribute to the discussion or not. Most of your posts are 1-liners. Those might get the point across as in: you stated your opinion. That however is not contributing toward any healthy discussion.

E.g. this one:


You could have writen at least a few more sentences on what factors it would depend in your opinion. What do you think would be a point for a bussiness to accept bitcoin and what (do you think) would be a point not to accept bitcoin. Like this its just an opinion and since we dont know you, it alone has not much value.

All of these posts are no problem btw if you do not sell your signature. You are getting paid for each post, thus the mods assume that you are more likely to post something just because you get paid for it. If thats not true and the way you post is just the way you post, stop selling your signature and I am sure you will have no more problems.

I was very shocked when I learned 14 days ago that I had lost my right to post for those 14 days for 'spam and insubstantial posts'.

This is nonsense, I have never spammed at least in the sense of what I think spam is also how is a post of say 15 words insubstantial if that is all that is required to get a point across?

I of course don't want this to happen again - how many words is OK in a post for it not to be classed as insubstantial?