Isn't that exactly what we're doing? Numerous ideas have been suggested to help clean up the forum but we now just need theymos to implement them. Removing signatures from lower ranks, requiring merit to become a Junior and punishing badly run signature campaigns seem to be the most popular and easiest to implement and would have a drastic effect on both the spam and culture here.
I think drastic measures are needed in order to stop the spam that is infesting this forum.
Like I said in an earlier post on a different thread, you need to tackle the root cause and not the effect. So, campaign managers need to be investigated if they paid spammers or not.
I don't disagree with the idea to have merit in place in order to reach Jr. Member rank but please keep in mind that there are a lot of accounts of any rank already (including Legendary), that are spamming this forum and getting paid for it.
Well there's not much you can do to enforce this. I wouldn't really be against people having to hire someone trusted or experienced to run campaigns, but then that becomes an issue of who gets to be trusted especially if you never allow new people. Existing campaign managers would then have a monopoly over running them. How do you decide who gets to run them or not as well? Rank? People could then just buy an account. Zapo is a new campaign manager and he's a rarity in that he actually does what he's supposed to and doesn't accept shitposters and those without merit. Should he not be able to run campaigns because he hasn't had any previous experience even though he's doing a better job than some of the current 'experienced' managers here? What happens if you're a new company but have a trusted member of staff who is prepared to run them efficiently but they would still be a newbie here? Should we be forcing them to hire someone just because they don't have a high rank or activity? I would rather just let people run campaigns, but if they clearly don't know what they're doing then they should be warned and then face punishments if appropriate. That to me seems the most sensible way to tackle it, but the problem is the issue isn't being tackled at all right now and anyone can run a campaign as bad as they want with absolutely no repercussions at all and that's something that needs to change.
Yes, you are right, there are members like Zapo who is running the IOU campaign like a PRO and it wouldn't be fair to restrict users from being able to be campaign managers but if there is no time from mods to check the activity of campaign managers, I would be OK with a limited list of campaign managers approved by administration. I think the grater good aka "no spam" would be more beneficial to the members here.
Anyways, the bigger problem is not really the people managing the campaigns from the Bitcoin Services section but the bounty campaigns you see in the altcoin boards...
If you take a look at their sig campaign requirements it's plain ridiculous. Not to mention they are paying members in "stakes" and after 3 months the payment might not even happen at all, essentially spamming the forum for free...