You could however argue that these people have come here to start a business.
I don't understand. Unless someone is running a business and a signature campaign, I don't see how advertising for a website is comparable to starting a business.
Sometimes in newspaper stands, and at the grocery store, there will be certain publications that are given away for free that contain both advertisements and various articles. These publications are in the business of writing articles, and selling advertisements to be displayed nearby such articles. Someone who comes to bitcointalk solely for participating in signature campaigns, among other people, are in the business of writing posts and selling advertisements to be displayed under these posts.
I also find the people who work in the little kiosks at the mall to be very annoying, however I do not propose banning those kiosks from malls. I don't think we should ban people from coming here for the sole purpose of earning signature campaign money, as long as they do not break the other rules, including not making low quality/low content posts.
Me neither, which is why I didn't say we should. All I said was that I don't think users who come here only for signature campaign earnings are viable for the forum in the long run; as soon as any sort of monetary incentive disappears, so does a large portion of people who 'love BitcoinTalk'.
I think there are most people that come here for the sole purpose of participating in signature campaigns then you realize. This is probably a high percentage of the
people that participate in signature campaigns (I believe that many people who can be described this way have several alt accounts each participating in a signature campaign) are here solely for that reason. I also believe that some of these people will develop a genuine interest in the discussions that they eventually participate in, so they came for the money, but they stay for the Bitcoin (discussions).
I think [...] should allow [...] signature (campaign) only for xx ranking
I think this would only drive up the price of these ranking accounts, and drive down the price of accounts. I don't think this would do very much in terms of reducing signature spam, nor would it do very much to address the issue of low quality posts.