Topic: Have we left "Bitcoin Discussion" board for spammers, forever?? (Read 3025 times)

I said that because I think that being a moderator is quite a bigger responsibility than being a Merit Source, since a Merit Source is only responsible to choose the posts that he thinks are of quality, but a mod has to decide if a person or a post needs to remain or to go. But of course as you said, theymos has all the stats and there are already a lot of trusted users who are ready to dedicate their time to this cause. So it should not be difficult for him to choose some hard working mods around here.
The reporters would absolutely lose hope if there is no manual patrolling going on in boards like Bitcoin Discussion or Altcoin Discussion etc. where if you report one post, meanwhile, 10 more posts are submitted.

It should have been done a long time ago, but why isn't it as easy as choosing a merit source? I'd argue it's probably easier. Theymos has all the stats of all the reporters in each separate sub board and there's already quite a few very high reporters to choose from including some very long-standing and pretty trusted users. I've suggested a couple in the past that I'm sure would make a huge difference, but leaving that sub without one only makes it worse and others are even starting to lose hope in reporting: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/is-there-any-point-in-reporting-spam-megathreads-5039285

He should have already done it along with the selection of Merit Sources he announced recently with the new changes. I know it is not as easy to choose a mod as it is to choose a Merit Source, but today or tomorrow, it needs to be done. The forum in current situation needs patrolling more than Merit distribution which is also for the betterment of the community. Bitcoin Discussion and Beginners & Help would definitely require more care right now or they will go even deeper in this shit.

I hope theymos will implement some new mods soon. Bitcoin Discussion is only going to get worse the longer it doesn't have a couple of dedicated caretakers looking after the place.


The world could lose interest in bitcoin but some form of crypto will likely always be around and if there's ICOs that will still pay them then people will still come here in droves. The vast majority of people who sign up to this forum couldn't' care less about bitcoin or what it stands for, but they just want to earn tokens to cash out into their local fiat. As long as people can earn here then the forum will do ok for traffic.

Oh, I see. Thanks. I think that could work, although for threads that gets multiple replies easily, it could be challenging to go through it one by one. But I could see how this is going to at least solve the problem with the spamming. It is like cleaning up your house one room at a time.

No. A self-moderated thread means that the creator of that thread is himself the moderator of it, meaning he doesn't need to report anything to a forum moderator, but instead, he can delete them himself and keep the discussion clean.



I don't know what you are talking about, since the population of this forum as well as Bitcoin users database are increasing rapidly. A percentage subtracted does not count when a percentage added is bigger than it.

I did, however, I have to ask what do you mean by self-moderated thread though? Do you mean like the other suggested, that if a user saw a post that seemed spam or of low quality, to report it right away? If that is the case then I agree. I think that it could help the moderators have an easier job since the users are helping, is that right?

It's more like those 11% are the shiposters that were here only to promote the scammy ICOs for some shitcoins.
Don't worry so much about the bitcoin popularity, its doing grate at the moment.

The new changes have undoubtedly made a difference for the forum, but as you said, and many others have been saying, a requirement of more than 5 Merits to make the signatures available would have made the difference much more bigger than this. But, as they say, something is better than nothing.


Filtered words won't prevent spammers from spamming, since they can always use different words if they come to know what words are being filtered. And it is not possible to stop this by filters since the words they use to spam are the words other users also use to post, so it won't just stop the spammers from posting but it would not allow others to use the same words as well. That solution won't work in this case.


That is what I suggested here, if you read the OP, you would have known. I asked people to create self-moderated threads in Bitcoin Discussion board to keep the spirit alive, and don't just let the spammers take over the board. A self-moderated thread can do good since the creator can easily remove useless comments and keep the discussion clean all the time.

Oh, okay. Thanks I will. I see a lot of them in the Bitcoin Discussion board. Although I am not sure if the post itself is a duplicate, a lot of the titles I see have been posted before (sometimes I just do not click anymore when I see a title I have already seen before). To be honest it is not just in the Bitcoin Discussion board, even in the Off-topic and Altcoins and Economics discussion board, I think.

this forum loses 11% visitors per months,

so be paitient, as soon as the world doesnt care about bitcoin anymore you will be rid of the spammers as well

If you see a duplicate topic, hit the report button and in the comment box include a link to the already existing topic. I do this regularly and the duplicates are almost always removed, it just sometimes takes several hours for a moderator to get round to it because hey, they have lives too.

I frequent the Bitcoin Discussion board and you are right, the posts are actually the same ones more often. Do you think that maybe there should also be some sort of rule that prevents users from reposting the same topics over and over? I am not sure how it will work of course but I was thinking how in WordPress you can filter and set some banned words to prevent spammers from commenting. Or perhaps a moderated new topic and/or comments? It will surely take a lot of work but maybe it will alleviate the spam in the discussion board.

Thank You. I appreciated it.

I repeated my views/replies analysis that I had performed previously in this thread. Essentially I took the first few pages in various boards, and divided the total views by the total replies. Boards such as Meta and Technical Discussion were coming out with a ratio roughly 20 views per reply. Bitcoin Discussion came out with a ratio of only 3.81, proving that people aren't reading the topics in Bitcoin Discussion, and are just using the board to reach posting requirements for their signatures.

Repeating that analysis today, the ratio for Bitcoin Discussion is up at 9.12. This is a big jump, and I'm sure some of it is a margin of error, but it's still proof that the new merit requirement has made some difference. However, it's obviously not enough, with the ratio still being less than half of the less spammy boards. I would echo statements made elsewhere that I think an increased requirement to 10 merits to have a signature would make a much more significant impact.

Enjoy your Full member rank  
For the first time I gave out 3 merit (my last bit again) in one transaction I guess   By the way - you deserved it.

LoyceV's analysis show that there has been a 23.3% decrement in total posts within 24 hours after the new changes. And that number decreased to 18.6% within the next 24 hours, making it 18.6% for 48 hours. The thing is, that number should be increasing, but instead, its decreasing. The changes have worked, I agree, but for those changes to work more, people need to be careful when handing out Merits to Newbies to promote them to Jr. member. That is the reason why the posts are increasing again, because of the useless promotions shitposters are getting from generous sMerit holders.



And I'm totally surprised to see how some people are Meriting their posts by saying, "The effort deserves appreciation" or "It is at least better than other posts from shitposters" without even having a look at their post histories which would clear every doubt in your mind about what they are here for. You can't just promote a user who has done nothing else than hunting bounties until now but has just posted something that is only a decent post, and by decent I mean it is not a totally useless post. People should at least do it once they find someone constantly trying to improve themselves, but not only on the bases of a single post.

Not quite. It's like the diet/lite version/extreme compromise of what I wanted, but I guess I'll have to take it for now. If we removed signatures from Juniors completely and only Members and above can have them once they've earned the required merit then that really would make a difference. I've seen dozens of shitposting newbies get a merit since yesterday just for merely agreeing the new change is a good thing. Most of them are probably lying and are crying with rage behind their computer screens but know that screaming and complaining about it is futile so they just agree, especially when they see others have been merited for saying so. You can get a solitary merit here by fluke or accident (or buying/trading it with someone), but let's see them try get ten of those to get a signature. A half decent poster will have no issue in getting that at all but a shitposter is screwed. A farmer with dozens to hundreds of accounts even more so. I can only hope more of my suggestions are implemented in the future including removing signatures from Juniors because one merit still won't make much of a difference to the overall quality of the board in the grand scheme of things. We need to go after the ICO campaigns next that are paying for the spam in the first place.

It is implement almost like you proposed, bravo!

Just let´s see if something going to change in next few weeks. I believe forum will receive 10-12% less posts in 2 weeks time.

I totally agree with you, don't get me wrong, but I'm talking about the current situation. I feel mods are severely understaffed in comparison to the amount of "bounty hunters"(low-life shitposters). Until there are enough mods to deal with those spammers, BTC Discussion is most probably dead. The forum as a whole has been handled in a bad way, which looks bad for a forum this size. Honestly, there are a lot of better ways this whole board can be handled if someone would just put in the effort. A change from the ground up is needed, otherwise, it would just be a temporary patch-up.