This post is written with all due respect to Bitcointalk and their mods. I love this board and visit it exclusively.
This post is about forum and it belongs to Meta Board! Why did you post this in Altcoin Discussion? Move this to Meta by clicking Move Topic in lower left.
I believe a lot of the ideas which are being done to prevent spam are actually causing more spam on this forum.
What makes you say so? The website traffic has reduced considering the traffic present in the start of the year and it is evident from the merit implementation and the reduce in prices of btc and the forum is somewhat quiet nowadays an exception being Alt Boards and Bitcoin Discussion as usual. This had always been a hotbed for spammers to complete their posts! Meta is frequently flooded with hacked and banned account recoveries.
The one sure way to stop spam on this forum is to stop the signature campaigns.
This idea has been discussed quite a couple of times and this won't happen as theymos has completely ruled out this idea. Here is a quote of him saying so,
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.
Except the implementation of merit and deletion of some major mega spam threads often by mods there hasn't been a major attempt to stop spams till now.
The banning of signatures completely would be considered only when merit isn't able to control the spam being generated. It may happen on rare cases only when btc price skyrockets and lot more people join this forum for hunting bounties.
Another issue is the merit system. Now that it is very difficult to raise up past jr member guess what happens.
Yes, it would be difficult if you are not bothered to learn anything new or post anything constructive. There are handful of people who ranked up using merit. Unless you stick to Alt, Btc Discussions and other spam boards it would be impossible for you to receive your first merit. Members who hasn't received even a single merit in these 7 months is considered to be a poor poster and should never rank up past Jr Member.
The signature campaigns must end if we want to stop spam. If signature stay the rules should be continued to be studied because I do not believe this is working.
It is the campaign managers who should be punished for not managing their campaign properly and encouraging spams.