theymos, this is a perfect example of the beast you have created by linking signatures with activity. Remove signatures from activity and this nonsense stops immediately. How can we compete against bots doing this? Currently anyone can create an unlimited amount of accounts and when users are using bots like he is to just copy a post and change a few words for synonyms it's often very hard to notice. I've just banned this account but how many others does he have doing the same? It's utterly pointless banning accounts if he's got 200 others that I've missed that will still be botting away. Things need to change. Do me favour and look into this user and just tell me how many alt accounts you can find. There are dozens upon dozens of individuals farming thousands of accounts this way and it's only going to get worse over time. The worst thing about this is once they hit a sufficient rank they can get paid by lazy ICO campaigns for merely copy and pasting and they'll never notice the abuse.
if theymos could implement a script for determining something along the lines of 'merit points' asscoated with general post quality, i wouldn't be against the idea of signatures being linked to those points instead, it would provide an initial incentive for good post quality from the start an account is created, and provide a long term incentive for maintaining a good post quality. if theymos can also implement other factors in, suchas deleted posts for not following forum rules, it'll also push members towards following the general forum rules. maybe even diminishing returns on merit points (or whatever they're to be called) can be used for people with alt accounts, or accounts on the same ip. just some rambling thoughts. How would this work though? Wouldn't that just be gamed? People could still just copy and paste 'quality' posts in order to get merit points, right? I think it would just cause more headaches than problems it solves to be honest.
for theymos,
I think to prevent multiple acounts should be given mandatory rules to create a signature campaign, such as making a report per day their post link, with it multiple accounts will trouble to use the cheating way, because it reports every post they post is very confusing and make tired
I think to prevent multiple acounts should be given mandatory rules to create a signature campaign, such as making a report per day their post link, with it multiple accounts will trouble to use the cheating way, because it reports every post they post is very confusing and make tired
I can't imagine how a one person can control a 200 account in a day or two.
But this brilliant idea can make an account farmer lost his/her head.
It can easily be done with bots if all they do is copy a post from earlier on in a megathread. There are numerous individuals that have been caught with hundreds of accounts and many more that I suspect are doing it that have been reported but not looked into by an admin going on all year (some use bots and others just post of copy and paste manually). One Russian guy had a little over 200 accounts and all they did was rehash their previous posts reworded slightly post after post account after account. The entire Vietnamese sub board thread had to be locked because 99% of the accounts posting in there were just copy and pasting random text from online and of course to anyone not speaking Vietnamese nobody was any wiser....until I noticed it of course. The worst thing is Sylon (the worst campaign manager on these forums despite what his avatar claims) was paying them all to do it and continues to pay spambot accounts because he never checks anyone's post quality at all.
Anyone notice anything wrong with this post?
This is fairly concerning. I would agree that post very well could have been made by a bot. However it will be very difficult to moderate (spot) those types of posts. I would be willing to say you probably would not have spotted this if you had not written, or at the very least interacted with, that post. That person may or may not have a large number of accounts, however at the very least, the likely plan may have been to eventually ramp up his operation to many accounts (he could have been testing his bot, AI, etc.,). It will have been made by a bot. That's why it doesn't make much sense as he's just used a program to swap a few words for synonyms and that doesn't always work out right. I spot them often, but you're right, it's easier to spot when they've copied your own posts and many people only report their own that have been copied when they notice it. The sad thing is the copy and pasters often stand out like a sore thumb because they tend to copy a well thought out or 'long' post and these stand out a mile over all the one/two line shitposters that have become pretty standard.
One solution to the spambot problem would be to require a captcha to post until you have made x post, have y activity, or some combination of the two. The units of evil system could be incorporated to influence the x and y values.
This is something I've considered and I think it could be worthwhile trying - as annoying as it will be to new users - but I think captchas can also easily be bypassed, but I think it should be considered for maybe all newbie accounts to enter before each post up until they hit maybe 14 activity or Junior status etc.
Or just simply make a subscription fee for all the users or just for participation in spesific forum sections like the bounty and signature once. So in order to participate in a bounty or signature campaign the user have to pay some fee to the forum and those money can be ivested in moderators. The high rank members can have lower fees, higher for newbies. It's just an idea. The forum is a grate place for me and I am willing to pay what it takes to make it even better.
If you read my other posts in this thread you will see that is exactly what I've suggested. I don't think making people pay $100 or so to get a signature will affect traffic very much if at all. People would just pay it because they know they can make it back in a week or so so it's a worthwhile investment. Even impoverished people could probably beg, borrow or steal that money to invest in an account here and it would be worth it.
Or just simply make a subscription fee for all the users or just for participation in spesific forum sections like the bounty and signature once. So in order to participate in a bounty or signature campaign the user have to pay some fee to the forum and those money can be ivested in moderators. The high rank members can have lower fees, higher for newbies. It's just an idea. The forum is a grate place for me and I am willing to pay what it takes to make it even better.
If you believe a fee would discourage spammers you're wrong. It would only impact the economy as paid posting would become a little less profitable. Instead of 0.1BTC per month a spammer would be getting that - the fee, e.g. 0.08BTC. Still worth it! It would also discourage new users because not everyone is able to pay a fee from the start, while the long time spammers (who just have to be rich by now) would keep doing it anyway.
I think you're wrong and are probably just basing it off the fact that you don't want to have to pay anything to be able to earn here. Do you think a spammer is going to pay $100 to have a signature on each of his 100 accounts? Of course not, but if you can create 100 accounts for free then it will continue to be abused en mass and by people with hundreds of accounts. Charge to have a signature and this abuse will stop almost instantly or be drastically curbed by about 99%. We really can't continue to just let people have dozens to hundreds of accounts because it gets worse day by day and there's not enough manpower or hours in the day to deal with it now, nevermind months down the line as the problem grows exponentially.
