Topic: If this contiunes, we'll lose the Bitcoin Discussion topic (Read 691 times)

Good idea to prevent duplicate topics, but unfortunately bots and spammers won't care about it, they need topics to spam to, and it's better to open a new topic and spam there instead of spamming into an existing spam megathread, because nowdays it seems that the "good old" spam megathreads have been deleted and a lot of posts of the farmed accounts has also vanished... Farmers/spammers (the serious ones)
 maybe realized that it's risky to post into a spam megathread because it can disappear in a second (with the effort they put into it) so it seems they try to open new threads... And they don't care if it's a duplicate or not, unfortunately...

Hello, yes, good discussions become fewer and fewer every day. I'm already tired of looking at clones about bitcoin topics. I need a more strict order in the forum on spam control topics.

Assuming the subject line of each post conveys the subject (probably doesn't), you could add a filter that alerts any users This Post Exists and provide quick links to the post for review.

This could avoid some of the duplicate subject matter.  The member could still post, but it would act similar to the notice when other posts go live before completing a reply.

+1 for newbie jail
would save a hell lot of work for us and for the mods... and if we move some of the mods to the beginner thread (they will have some free time if newbies won't spam the whole forum) and they will be able to handle the beginner's thread, it would be easier to find the quality posts there to merit, to let newbies get out of the jail as soon as possible, if they deserve it... (or they buy copper membership)

Reporting day #3
It seems that the Bitcoin Discussion thread is getting better (I've only done 33 reports today with just a few 'ladybots'), which could have several explanations:
1) Ladybot spam attack has finished
2) Other members also report the spam daily, so by the time I start, most of them are deleted already
3) It's weekend and spamming newbies are in the pub

I've reported more than 300 topics in a few days (started with nearly 0 report count) and it seems that after 300 reports you can have a look at the reports (you get the 'your report history' link) which report was good or bad. Seems useful

Seriously that's disheartening. Those people from outside are solely bent on destroying the forum and maybe someday start their own. I think the Mods should come up with a more strict rule to help keep the forum on order.

Fair enough. I hate reporting on my phone, and only do it with simplistic cases. Obviously, I'm not sure what you are refering too, but if it's not plagiarism then just comment something like: "Wrong section, doesn't belong in Bitcoin Discussion. Move to Speculation".

I wanted them nuked for good, not just moved to another board as in my opinion a thread created by a bot or spammer shouldn't be allowed anywhere.
Glad to hear that the board is a bit cleaner now and kudos to the mod that nuked the ladybots.
50 topics reported a day  ....no wonder the number of topics in BD is not growing anymore


I'm doing my reporting especially when I'm on the phone and I just browse around, so I can't easily check that it's plagiarism.
What is worse, some of those threads (nuked now) had only one line, a speculation about the price, I can't accuse a post like that of plagiarism...
But, reading pugman's post too it seems members have the same opinion on this, I think I'll go next with this approach.

Oh, and... newbie jail.....where are you ?!!?!!

I'm not asking anyone to report 200 or more reports. One or two is good enough. A few people have already dedicated themselves to reporting more, but it's their choice at the end of the day. If they want a cleaner forum for the time being until restrictions are possibly implemented then the only way to go about it is reporting. I'm not expecting them to go hunting for them either, but if they happen to stumble upon spam within their normal usage of the forum then it doesn't take long at all to report.

The what if threads, hypothetical questions are the ones that get spammed the most. Threads like is quantum computing a threat to Bitcoin and what happens with my crypto when I die aren't really spam topics, but having them in discussion board and getting piled up with spam responses makes the thread useless for anyone looking to get some educational content from the topic. I think having an educational board or something like that (child board of serious discussion) would be more appropriate for these topics.

And then there are topics like this:






Now these topics don't have anything educational to offer, discussions are purely based on hypothesis/speculation/assumptions, too easy for spammers to write anything after yes or no. These topics don't belong to off-topic and locking them will simply lead to duplicate topics. IMO, all the what if and will questions/topics should be reported and removed from Bitcoin discussions board and put under a board where there is no incentive for posting, this will somewhat prevent spammers coming up with duplicate topics.

So 'we' are asking forum members to report 200 or more posts, and this could result in multiple submissions to the mods. That is a lot of work for all involved. It seems like madness to me, when a simple policy of restricting new members posting facilities would go a long way towards avoiding the problem in the first place. Many other forums do this, and they don't have BT's level of spamming problems.

Why not you give it a headstart? You have told members before to report 200 posts and other nonsense in the name of the helping the forum, why don't you do the same. You might get your negative removed, like you said in your trust ratings given to others. 

---

Like Welsh said, just report it as plagiarism if that's the case. If the bot is posting random stuff in random threads, report it as off topic / possible bot. Different mods have different understandings, so your reports might be marked bad if enough evidence is not available, though that will be a rare case.

I know your looking for a mods explanation, but if we are specifically referring to the 1 post newbie bot invasion I've just been reporting them with "Plagiarism. Original source: Every single one of them I've come across was either using old posts here on the forum or copying from popular news websites. The earliest post I've seen copied was in 2010.

All of them were marked good so should be sufficient.

I haven't wrote such a long explanation when I have reported those threads
I just only wrote: "Should go to Speculation" that's all
I haven't checked the speculation thread it they were moved there, but the topics has vanished from the Bitcoin Discussion thread at least...

EDIT:
I have done the review of the Bitcoin Discussion thread again today, it's much better now, it took only half an hour and reported only about 50 topics, but most of them were those poor numbered wenches again...

That telegram spam is the tip of the iceberg, the "ladies" are far more problematic and are back with their topics

Image loading....


I doubt they are real users , but ....just how old is the material those bots are posting?


For God's sake, Adbrite went our of business in 2013!!!!!!!

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--4268909
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--4269219
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--4268843
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--4268910
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--4268971
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--4269503
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--4269587
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--4269662
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--4269061

My question to the mods, how to properly report those threads?
"This user might be a bot since there are others with the same nickname style that are posting crap" does't look like a good explanation to me in a report.  

I have been reading some informations about crypto and beginners and help section is a lot way more better and informative than bitcoin discussion.

Just restrict posting to members with at least 10 merits, and thread starting to members with at least 50 merits.

You are generalizing people yourself, indeed who does not like free money? that is common sense not a dream of a shitposter.

That happened a long time ago. I remember people on other sites talk about bitcointalk to be the ground for trolls and shills brainwashed to spam the fourm for their own need. Either shitposting or ICO shill bumping. Bitcoin Discussion would need stric moderation to keep up with the amount of spam it sees everyday. Feels bad for the mods.

Dont generalize yourself as the face of the forum. Self proclaimed "Bounty hunters" and "Merit Hunters" are the lowest level of lowlife on this forum.

Rules will not have any effect unless there is change in the mentality.

A shitposter once said "Who does not like free money" - this mentality needs to be destroyed.

Just 50? I rather think 500

The forum as you have rightly stated, is losing its flavor and if we allow it to continue, by this year ending it might be a whole different story and people will now be like: I remember when BTT used to be like this and like that. Spam, merit farming, bounties all are shifting the main purpose of the forum to something else. I'm not trying to say bounties are wrong I'm a beneficiary but things should be done modestly. Strict rules should be made and violators evicted out of the forum I think it will help reshape the forum.

I wonder, who has been reporting a lot on altcoin section? those boards need more than 3 active moderators. I'd suggest people to start reporting more in altcoin section.

Next mod position is upon us, hungry forumiters.
If don hilary spends less time on his alt account, and people start reporting more on his section, we could have a better Bitcoin discussion. though I can't see any real solution other than restricting signature campaigns and bounties, because they are the root of the problem, admin wants free speech, cheaters are giving him free speech by posting nonsense all over the forum. is there anybody else besides me and a few others who'd post here even if they are not getting paid? this is bad. everybody who joins this forum has a paid signature no matter what they are advertising. people are already abusing this freedom. theymos do something. we are dead on the waters here.

Maybe its time for bitcointalk to have more mods(rather than just one) for a few sections being filled with spammers. Altcoin section can be a start.

Yeah, although Altcoin Discussion hasn't been subject to the newbie bot invasion as far as I can see. I would agree with you that in general that place is a mess though. Can't really blame the moderation team on that one as mprep is the only dedicated mod, and has to deal with thousands of posts per day in that section alone never mind it's child boards.

Yeah, I use plagiarism checkers if my initial search didn't come up with anything.

Altcoin discussion is much much worse, you can check on page 20 and you'll still see posts from today.
Most of it is stuff that should just be removed, massive spam threads asking the same questions over and over.

Bitcoin Discussion still has some decent conversation, while it's completely impossible to follow anything in Altcoin Discussion.

Which is why I started using a plagiarism checker: https://edubirdie.com/plagiarism-checker
Someone had recommended it in another thread in meta and it has been helpful ever since.

Maybe, I'm not sure. Most of the ones which I've reported have just been newbies posting plagiarized content. Doesn't seem they engage after that. Possibly, someone trying out their bot that they will eventually use for bounties. Some of the sources they are using are actually pretty difficult to find.



This isn't the case. It's not the fact they are asking questions which have been asked before they are literally copy, and pasting questions, discussions and replies from various different sources including the forum. There's been a few Satoshi/Sirius posts that have been copied.

If these are individual newbies who don't know whats what yet, I think something like a "search FAQ" bar that opens as you type your topic to recommend threads that ask the same question it might help reduce this. By this I mean something similar to binance when you open a ticket and it recommends similar things in the FAQ as you type your question.

I myself have posted a few bitcoin technical questions which I was sure that someone else has had to ask it in the past, unfortunately finding similar posts is a bit hard in some cases with the massive loads of topics being created, the problem kind of makes itself worse and snowballs on itself. Improving on the search functionality to make it "nicer" would definitely help.  I am not sure as to what kind of load this'l add on the servers and how much of a workload it would be on the forums developers though.

On the other note, it is kind of a pity that people are repeat answering a question with the same answer just to get posts for their bounties. (Yes I know I have a sig in my profile, I get it the hypocrisy - I really try add new value to a discussion each time I post). I find that unless it is a very interesting topic and discussion people just read the first post and answers and moves on. I think somehow the idea of adding value to a discussion with a post needs to be reiterated. There is zero value in giving the same answer as everyone else.

One possible guess would be a random dude having a myriad of accounts,and he sacrifices a few of those by plagiarizing topics,and using his other accounts to spam their way through. All this for bounties maybe. Cases like this have been true before,people managed to get hell a lot of rich.

---

Instead of totally abandoning Bitcoin Discussion, maybe just keep having discussions with those who want to. Create your own self moderated thread,and discuss stuff. We all came here to discuss about bitcoin and we are doing everything else other than that.

Most are plagiarism. What they benefit from doing this I don't exactly know, but I've found several threads made by these 1 post newbies which are either completely copy, and pasting or are only using a snippet of the text from another source. They seem to be getting a lot of it from news websites, but are also copying from much earlier posts on this forum too.

Seems like the person behind the bot likes to add a few emotes in it too. They seem to be targeting older posts that were made by substantial users, although they have just copied posts from earlier today too. They also like adding punctuation marks such as "!!!".

Please can everyone report these

Today I took a deep breath and started to check today's new topics on the Bitcoin Discussion thread.
Today our hard working little newbie ants has created 10 pages of new topics (roughly) and I took my time to check those topics which had less then 10 posts... it took an hour or more (even more...).

The result is 127 reports but the reason I'm amazed/frightened is:
90% of the posts was done by a newbie with 1-2 activity points or a brand new user....

The naming concept of the newbie was like this: Firstname+numbers, like Annie456 and so on... and they were different users, of course....

Most of the topic opener posts were about bitcoin price speculation, in max. 2-3 lines...

I still have a few (OK a lot) tabs open in my browser, for the post that were longer than 2-3 lines because I'll do a copypaste check on them, but it's possible that it will be the job of tomorrow

I hope the mods won't get headache from the amount of report I've generated for them

Bitcoin Discussion and Altcoin Discussion and not to mention Economics have all become full of redundant threads where shitposters from every nook and corner of the world come to shitpost. Merit is not the solution to this. Merit is supposed to prevent shitposters from ranking up while the spam is still continuing. The mods are having their hands full - what else can be done?

Removal of the section would mean the biggest bitcoin forum in the world is having their section dedicated to discussion regarding bitcoin removed. It needs to be controlled and I have not idea how theymos would do it.

Yes, there are a lot of shit threads created in that section. I have created thread about that task and thought we need additional moderator but got reply from hilariousandco. To be fair reporting of threads works pretty well and hilariousandco immediately responses on it.

But I think the reason behind those threads is following: Usually newbie users create/dublicate meaningless threads in order to spam and let others to post as much as possible and that's for the sake of signature I guess. When they post in one thread, then another silly and meaningless thread comes with title: How to talk about bitcoin to my mother-in-law's uncle's grandparents and etc, very boring 

Me too, I still reply threads coming from Bitcoin Discussion and I don't know exactly why, maybe that matters for me is to help others by answering their queries or giving some advice. But I'll make sure first that a certain post has a unique entity somehow like OP's opinion or personal experience and not like "What is bitcoin" kind of posts as well as threads with 300+ replies. Besides, I still see some interesting posts there like this one: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/happy-bitcoin-pizza-day-4139909 (honestly, I'm not aware that it was yesterday ) so for me that board is not yet a trash.

I think to make everything better, mods should be more active on deleting shittyposts but I'm sure they do ad always.

I put it on the list of hidden topics, nothing useful there. Even Altcoin discussion is better, at least you might learn about new promising altcoin or ICO. "Make 20 constructive posts with 100 characters a week" in action.

I am really avoiding the Bitcoin Discussion board as much as I can since almost all of the topics there are just repetitions of old topics and most of them are getting deleted. Newbies can continue posting to the same threads they are making and they will continue to have a reduced post count whereas we (member who can distinguish a good topic from the bad ones) can choose a decent topic in that board and continue the flow of conversation there.

I really hope that there is something we could do to prevent newbies from creating such threads and to save the essence of that board.

7-9 additional pages daily is insane.

The Mods seem to be scrubbing the shit threads a lot more frequently then they have in previous years, which is a great thing! The other thing we can do is report threads that we see as frivilous or duplicative.

The Bitcoin board also gets a lot of mis-placed threads - announcements, spam, questions, etc...things that correctly belong in other places.

Good work mate. Seems like the mod took care of them already.

I was afraid of a kind of answer like this one...


I would support any kind of idea that slows down spammers and newbies opening meaningless topics and posting BS everywhere.

I still fight in the Bitcoin Discussion thread because every day you can find at least 5 interesting topics among the 300 others The future of that thread should be bright, because this can't be worse, I think

I tried to make a thread in Bitcoin discussion a while back and had no responses. I eventually admitted defeat and posted it to serious discussion and it took off!

We will either have to accept that the spammers have taken over Bitcoin discussion and other boards or do something about it. More mods probably wouldn't hurt if the current staff are struggling. I'm currently avoiding the Bitcoin discussion board and it's one of the reasons why a lot of my posts are in serious discussion.

There are some cases of a good thread discussions but they last for a few hours before the 17th page has already started. That's why LoyceV suggested that captcha should be introduced (for deleting posts) and I'll say captcha for deleting and making new posts, at least for new members.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/mods-nuke-120-act-commercial-spambots-post-and-delete-1000s-of-posts-per-day-3955810

I think we already lost it. Now it's just a festival of redundant posts and opinions that have been said in the thread 50 times.

"Will bitcoin replace fiat?"
Answer: "I think this is possible only in the distant future"
(real example)


That's why none of my last 500 posts (or more) have been made in the Bitcoin Discussions board. It's simple impossible to have any kind of real discussion in there.

Bitcoin Discussion usually gathers approximately 7-9 additional pages daily. Most of the new topics are the copy of the spam megathreads or some BS from newbies.
There should be a bounty or something because today I've found 3-4 copies of this post, each of them was in a separate topic...




I know that everybody have the right to express himself/herself and to open a new topic, and also everybody have the right to report these topics to the moderators but we could save a lot of work for everyone if we could somehow manage not to let every newbie post BS everywhere...