Topic: Is there any point in reporting spam megathreads? (Read 632 times)

Well I agree, but trust issues is something theymos has mentioned briefly before, but I don't know whether theymos was on about it's hard to find trustworthy people to do things like the coding of new software or stuff like the accounts/legal dealings here that goes on behind the scenes. I was talking more about making new Admins than just mods though, who would obviously need to have a higher level of trust when you have access to IPs and can restore access to accounts etc. Regular mods obviously also do need to be pretty trusted but there's probably not that much damage they can do other than delete posts etc and would be found out pretty fast and dealt with if they were abusing their position. Posts can easily be restored as well. I get the feeling theymos doesn't really trust anyone to deal with admin issues though because why wouldn't new admins have been made already? (then again, I guess we could ask the same about why more mods haven't been added to meet demand either). We wouldn't have had the issue with accounts not getting restored if one or two other people could be dedicated to restoring accounts. Not addressing these issues though just makes the forum worse and worse in the process. The forum obviously needs both more of mods and admins so that's something theymos should prioritise because there are obviously people here who care about the forum and can make it better in the process and all that is required from theymos is the initial decision that will then free him up for stuff only he can be trusted with (like the coding etc). He must get annoyed at all the constant PMs that he gets from both users and staff for things that he doesn't have the time to do and if he doesn't then distribute that workload which is the most logical answer to the various issues we have here.

I just don't buy that. If we are that worried about assigning new moderators, then just start a few people with very limited power (say, deleting only newbie posts in a specific board only) for a probationary period, say a couple of weeks. Then move up to any posts. Then move up to moving posts to other sections. Then move up to locking threads. Etc. Etc. Even if someone suddenly went on a rampage (highly unlikely) and locked every thread in a board, then you can just demote them and undo all their actions. Or start some new mods in Off Topic. That board is a complete mess, and even if someone went rogue and nuked every thread in there, it would probably be an improvement. If they do a good job there for a few weeks, move them up to a real board. Or put a threat of temp-banning any new mod that goes rogue/does anything malicious.

But seriously, given the numbers of people who clearly care about the forum and spend hours of their time for nothing reading mind-numbing shit to report, I struggle to believe he can't find a handful of people to moderate. It's not a money issue, as he's previously stated about potentially dropping the forum advertising slot altogether. So I just don't understand why we are letting some boards be permanent spam fests with no discussion that most senior members won't even visit, let alone post in.

He must know people in real life that can be trusted and can do the job correctly. Considering he is basically famous around these communities, there is no way he doesn't know someone that can be trusted.

He's acknowledged the need to do so and it's obviously something that needs to be done sooner rather than later. He did put my suggestions of more sub mods/admins in the 'OK in principle, would require thought/adjustment/implementation' category in the community suggestions thread but for some reason he just isn't committing to it. I don't know whether it's just down to trust or what, but it's not like there isn't anyone trustworthy on the planet to do some of this stuff. In his own words he doesn't have time for even the basic of things here and barely even posts here so this work should be delegated out to those that can do it. We could have one or two people restoring accounts, one running the ad slots, one or two replying to emails and then that leaves theymos to crack on with the most important stuff behind the scenes. At the moment nothing is getting done at all and people are having to wait a year+ to get their account back which isn't acceptable. The forum could run so much more efficiently and he doesn't even need to do anything other than initially sort that out by giving the ability to trusted people to do this stuff. All he has to do is then oversee things but you can do that from the backseat. Not doing anything at all just makes things worse and we're practically going backwards at the minute as more and more issues just keep getting pilled up.

I feel like this forum has so much potential and theymos is really not taking advantage of it. I understand he is extremely busy but can he not give someone else permissions to assign mods/admins and other stuff?

I don't disagree. I would rather each board have three mods as opposed to either one or zero (especially if you discount Globals). Mining isn't even that active and is certainly one of the less-spammed boards, but Bitcoin Discussion on the other hand is spam central and doesn't even have even one dedicated mod. I managed to get a list of the top reporters in there from theymos a few months ago but nothing since despite a handful of PMs about the matter. Not going to keep annoying him with it so the ball is in his court now. Things like this should be done ASAP though and only require a short amount of his time and then no further action would be required from him and the forum benefits in the process.

Nope, but it's a great example of what can happen when a board does have enough moderator time dedicated to it. Low value/meaningless/duplicate threads deleted before they develop, threads locked once the conversation is over, not a spam comment in sight. And how to spread this behavior to the other boards isn't some great mystery - we just need some dedicated sub board mods. We shouldn't be at the stage where I can tell if you've been busy for a couple of days because my number of unhandled reports keeps climbing.

There's probably no reason other than that's just how it came to be. That board probably doesn't need three mods, but there's certainly some other boards that do need at least one and Bitcoin Discussion is one of them. In fact, I'd say most sub boards probably need at least one dedicated mod. It just frees up workload and saves everything being pilled up for Globals. Moderating Bitcoin Discussion (or trashing all the shit threads in there) would probably be a part-time job in itself, but until we get a couple of dedicated mods there and clamp down on the root cause of the spam (ICO campaigns) then nothing much will change.

Because almost EVERY thread gets deleted. And without a Pm to say it has been so you can't go and repost it elsewhere without a bit of knowhow.

Why can't we get this forum wide though?
And hilariousandco is just a glob mod, it's the same work no matter how many ways you split it. If there were three glob mods (instead of the two we have not) much more moderation could be done... Instead, Cyrus and Theymos have to moderate alongside the others...

Can we? All we need is a bit of preset concrete, some bricks and a few hundred 'servants' to really get out island built in a fast amount of time .

-ck is a mod because he made a piece of mining software (cgminer as far as I remember). I'm not sure what the others have done, gmaxwell was a core dev though also...

We could be if we pooled all our money together for seasteading! Nah, for a lack of better word I used it. Someone who has all permissions to lock in that section or to that particular usergroup. So Global moderators or the moderator of that section.

I'm not sure. Only theymos knows the answer to that. I'm guessing there's not a whole lot of reports going on in the project development section. I can only think of one person who I regularly see reporting there. Although, bare in mind I can only see newbies that are reported there.

It explains why the Mining board isn't a spam fest.

At the time of posting this comment, of the 39 threads on the front page of the Mining board, 31 of them are locked. Any thread that is low quality or spam is trashed, and any thread that has had OP's question answered is locked. OgNasty's thread is 14 pages, but there isn't a single spam post in it - that would be impossible in Bitcoin or Altcoin Discussion. Dedicated board mods not only help to keep a board clean (obviously), but they also free up the likes of hilariousandco and other global mods to deal with more important issues than deleting garbage posts.

The question remains also why a section so heavily moderated such as the mining section gets three mods whereas things like bitcoin discussion gets 1 (and that's a global mod so it doesn't really count) and project developement has no mods...

Agreed, but we run in to the problem of not enough mods again. I frequently report newly created threads for being spammy, low value, duplicate questions, etc. Sometimes these reports aren't acted on for 24 hours or more, by which time there can easily be 4-5 pages of spam replies.

This is quite true that it pushes things down the page.
And jurisiction? We a country now or something?
It is a lot better to lock topics with a large number of replies. If you're after not paying people for their sigs, move the thread to archival (they usually don't get paid that way)...

Yeah otherwise you get a lot of reports in meta going "welsh deleted my 50 copy-pased posts 50 pages down this spam megathread aargh".


Probably when their "I'm interested in this too!" comment gets deleted .

There's also the thing that something that never started as a spam megathread in 2014/2015 has turned into one later down the line. There will be quite a bit of loss in activity points if this happens and a lot of spam in the meta section about how someone's be demoted from legendary to sr or something...


I did with all the megathreads I made. Still commenting on them every few pages or so...
I reported posts on them as spam in 2015/2016 (when spam seemed to be accepted) and then didn't report any ever since because they never got deleted.

You've persuaded me that locking is better than nuking. While nuking spam megathreads would harshly punish the spammers, it would also discourage those who participated in good faith, which kind of misses the whole point of a forum, hence I am convinced.

That said, the thread I reported is still accumulating shitposts...

Lately too many old threads on the discussions board are revived by these newbies. I'm quite sure all these accounts are connected.


One post a day on a thread (40+ accounts, 40 threads) that didn't had any response for the last two weeks, a month, three months, six months. it's purposely done with a lengthy paragraph to look like it ain't spam (but definitely spun). Guess, there ain't any rule to ban them. These posts are simply opening up the window for all the spammers to post on a dead topic.

Guess, with the existing forum rules, these newbies intentionally bumping old threads can't be nuked. Reporting the whole thread with a reasonable reason is what can be done.

Definitely worth it. It pushes actual worthy discussion down the page, and it will then be forgotten in an hour, and never return. You see this all the time. I appreciate it from the standpoint of a user of the forum, and I'm sure a lot of other moderators do too. Unfortunately, I only remove topics when there's not many replies, and they are pointless. Otherwise, I'll lock them, but if they are out of my jurisdiction I'll ignore the report, and allow another moderator with permission to lock it to deal with it.

I'd rather get to the point where we are removing these trash threads than simply just locking them. It's better to do that when they don't have any replies, and before they become a problem. There's several threads asking the exact same question or generic statement. I'm pretty sure they look down the page, and take inspiration from previous threads, and can't think of their own content so just use already existing content.

Majority of these threads will incite vague answers for the pretext of making a thread asking some information are going to turn into spam megathreads. These are not created for the purpose of getting some insight or starting a proper discussion. They are made in order to spam for these bounties and thus they are made by the spammers themselves.

I have previously suggested a decent suggestion in this thread. Auto-lock threads after 25 pages because these OPs never return to address the replies nor do they want to discuss the points. These threads are as good as getting an "Abandoned" tag in front of them in the front page.

I don't think it's easy to get rid of spam megabreads, because in my opinion a good thing will sometimes be brought to a spam discussion, and I often find it. I think there needs to be a new solution about this.

It seems to me that after a short discussion, for example on page 2-3, you can already close the thread. Hang the lock. I am sure the one who asked the question has already received an answer to his question.
Another thing, when the discussion is some interesting news or events. There is of course, 10 pages and lock threads.

I do that quite a lot especially on bounty threads in the altcoin section.
If there's a lot of them, I like to leave a note in my comment to say "last page full of shitposts, could do with a bit of clensing" something like that.

Following the recent discussion, if when I see a spam thread I start checking all those one-liners’ posting history and I see it all looks the same, can I report him for that? Even if the posts have some sense? Something like: “one-liner shitposter, look at the post history". I mean, I know that I can report anything I want, but would that be useful?

You can spot many of those in the last pages of the thread, they write a one-liner and they have earned no or little merit.

Almost any thread in Bitcoin or Altcoin Discusion could develop in to a spam mega thread, regardless of the topic. The spammers are just there to churn out a line or two. They don't read and don't care about anything that came beforehand.

In the example you gave, even by page 3-4 there is no discussion going on, and the spammers have turned up with their usual great insights:


This is the kind of thread that could have been nipped in the bud by a dedicated board mod looking out for these kind of things. This thread could have been locked on page 5 without losing any quality content. Instead, it remained open for another 1000+ shitposts.

Maybe, but that's why I said there would be some short term pain. Besides, any other solution than us reporting entire threads for deletion will require changes made to the staff and/or forum (e.g. - hiring more mods).


The thread I provided as an example above didn't start off as a spam megathread, but it certainly became one at some point in its 58+ pages, hence I don't think preemptively nuking threads is the right approach. Also, there won't be any pain suffered by the sig campaign spammers unless you let them spam for a bit first.

What clearly isn't going to work is what @Lafu did - reporting hundreds of posts in one thread. That's way too much work for all involved and, besides, this is a fail in principle: we should not be spending as much or more time fighting spam as it would cost to simply read it.

I have reported some spam megathreads in the past , and i have reported  all spam posts and at the end reported the ANN .
One Spamthread i remember has got 400-500 reports and after i was finished the ANN got deleted.
Sure its a lot of work if you doing it this way but i guess  it is effective!
Just keep reporting this threads .

Oh, don't get me wrong - these threads are still spam fests and probably should be locked. But if you look at some of the most recent posts in those threads (Examples: #1, #2, #3), people are at least reading what is written and are responding to each other.

Now if you look at a page from a spam mega thread in Bitcoin Discussion such as this one, every post is a one or two line, meaningless, sometimes barely even English, shitpost. There is no back-and-forth between users, and you can absolutely guarantee nobody is reading the posts that are made.

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Totally, but even a single dedicated mod for Bitcoin Discussion and Altcoin Discussion (which is where I assume most of the reports come from, although I don't know this), would free up a lot of time for hilarious and other higher mods.

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I think if they don't get paid a couple of times most of them will just spam harder or in different boards.

I regularly report spam mega threads and they always get locked or trashed. I don't think the issue here is the mods not trusting us. I think simply having a dedicated board mod who would monitor threads and regularly lock or trash then before they become spam mega threads would be a big step forward.

Might I propose a not-so-radical solution that can actually be accomplished without the intervention of staff?

We need to report the OP of spam megathreads in bitcoin discussion while hilariousandco needs to trust our assessment and nuke the thread.

Once enough threads are nuked the shitposters will miss their sig campaign quotas and not get paid.

And once they don't get paid enough times they will quit joining campaigns.

There will inevitably be some butthurt from legitimate posters, especially those who participated in the first few pages of a thread, but think of this as short-term pain for long-term gain.


EDIT - I've reported one thread in bitcoin discussion as a test case - "What if Government bans Bitcoins?" [sic] - which I've quoted the OP in case the thread is, indeed, nuked:

If you find spam or report, and do so, you play an important role in helping the Bitcointalk Forum protect others from fraud.

Spam can be said is: clicking on something that is spam or the account in question makes unwanted posts, events, or conversations, including sending mass messages, sometimes spam is spread through clicking malicious links or installing malicious software. On other occasions, fraudsters get access to people's accounts, which are then used to send spam, gmail etc.

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As Mister said.(iasenko)".Note:
"Of course it's useful, reporting megatread, spam to help people out of fraud".

I agree, and Flying Hellfish has done a great job from what I've heard (I don't visit P&S ever so I can't say firsthand).

I think hilariousandco is burned out as a mod, and I don't say that disparagingly.  There's only so much he can do, and he needs help--and I'm not even talking about an assistant, I'm talking like 2-3 additional mods for Bitcoin Discussion alone.  I'm sure that's not going to happen, but that's the scope of the problem.

Even if it feels hopeless to report posts, I would still encourage people to keep doing it.  If nothing else, it gives you a sense that you're actually doing something as opposed to throwing up your hands and declaring the problem to be insoluble.

Well, I'm just saying that there isn't that much ''spam'' or shitposting going on there. Most signature campaigns do not allow you to post in off-topic or politics anyways.

?  There is no discussion going on in those threads.  

We post proof, they call us liars.   600+ pages.   There is no more discussion, as things have not changed in billions of years.  :/

If they could post anything supporting their claims, we could discuss it.  But they don't, because they can't.

I believe threads going on for hundreds of pages supported only by trolling should be reported and closed.

I think there is a distinction to made here.

Threads such as "Scientific Proof of God", "Evolution is a hoax", hell even the "Flat Earth" thread - although these threads are running in to the hundreds of pages, there is still discussion going on. People are quoting and directly replying to each other's points, even if some of those points are batshit insane.

In the spam mega-threads in Bitcoin and Altcoin boards, there is very rarely any discussion. It's just bounty spammers churning out the same generic meaningless posts to reach their requirements. The problem is that these bounty spammers will take over a thread almost immediately and any actual discussion that was going on in the first page or two is completely drowned out and lost. By page 5 onwards, it's pretty much 99% bounty spam guaranteed.

I do agree partially scientifically speaking, you can't, I know those 2 threads could have ended a long time ago, however I don't think the discussion was low quality even though, yes, sometimes we repeat ourselves (me and badecker since we are probably half of the replies there in the ''scientific proof of god'')

It's true it does open a window for newbies to spam, but they will find plenty of other threads to spam anyways. So personally I don't think those ones are really part of the problem, I'm guessing the gambling section is filled with those, bitcoin discussion definitely is.

Agreed - 600+ pages of something as simple as "Is the earth flat?"... the answers the OP needs have been posted a hundred times already.  He is ignoring them and asking the same questions over and over.

Don Pedro Dinero - I stand with you.  Let me know how I can help shut down these idiot threads.  "Scientific proof of god" is another - you can't prove something that you can't test.

Not to mention that they probably didn't write it themselves and merely copied and pasted something 10 pages before...

It would really help if the moderation of the Bitcoin Discussion section would be a bit more strict and threads would get trashed quicker. Something like a 25 Page reply limit before auto-lock would be great. After that if the discussion needs to be continued a section seperate for these Spam MegaThreads can harbor those threads. Never suggested this before and I wonder what others would say.

Only weed-hungry brain dead bottomfeeders would say that.

I try to troll some of them who post blindly without reading but these people dont ever come back to that thread to see if someone point out something or not. 

Well, that is the kind of users this forum is attracting right now.

As long as a person can get paid a little bit for something as trivial as posting some words, this will continue.

I would add Beginners and Help. Few years ago it was full of spam megathreads, but then mods started to lock topics after question was answered. The problem that now this board is full of question about bounties, airdrops, merit and etc.
Also, after appointing dedicated mod in Politics and Society situation improved a lot there. But it's still not perfect.

I agree with that, and I would add Ivory Tower.

I was thinking of Beginners', Bitcon Discussion, Political, Off topic, and maybe Meta, etc. It would be nice to maintain some interesting flows into some of the threads there.

I believe that every board should have a spam megathread. I'd rather the spambies posted in that, rather than pollute all the decent threads. I ignore most threads that have more than 40 or 50 replies, unless they are an interesting tech discussion of course.

It would be great if the mods moved the spam they don't want to delete into that thread as well. Who cares if it becomes a garbled string of non sequiturs, I won't be reading it anyway.

Well you've touched on a huge problem here that needs to be addressed, but what we need to be doing is tackling the issue at the source. And of course the source of the spam megathreads in the campaigns and their managers that pay these users to post in them continually. As long as shoddy campaigns can get away with paying spammers then nothing at all is going to change and a handful of reporters and mods is not enough to defeat thousands of shitposters shitposting every day. That's why there needs to be some community standards for signature campaigns and punishments for those that don't abide by them. Until there is then it's just like fighting a a hydra; you trash or lock one thread and then two more have already popped up in their place.


Well plagiarism is another huge issue in itself that we need to address, but we shouldn't be leaving threads up just so we can catch copy and pasters easier.


As I just said in another thread, 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 sub like Bitcoin Discussion without dedicated mods is only going to make it worse whilst putting more pressure on existing staff to handle the mountains of reports coming in which is never ending.

Is there any point? Of course there is, it's nice for our eyes and nervous to see less spammy threads. In Bitcoin Discussion section there are sometimes so shit threads like bitcoin can cure cancer and etc lol. And these people post here blindly, just to grow their post count and don't care how stupidity will be written by their hands, hands in best situation, otherwise google translate rises here.

It really depends on two things, the condition of the megathread as well as the moderator who is handling it. Some megathreads out there still has a good conversation going even if they have 20+ pages but some megathreads almost contain spam and they are the ones who need to be brought down. Also the final decision whether it gets trashed or not is the moderator reviewing your report, so it still comes down on their personal assessment on the thread. You are maybe just lucky that all your reports are accepted by a mod.

I report several spam mega threads a day. They have 100% record of either being locked or trashed. I would encourage others to do the same.

Spam megathreads initially may contain some informations but once they pass few pages the discussion is literally a garbage and no one read the last pages for not saying the last post.
That's why i would like to see it locked once it passes let's say 10 pages for example.
You can report it but you will likely get some bad reports or it will remains unhandled.

Some of the boards almost needs a fresh start, kind of like what Flying Hellfish did when he became mod of P&S. There are loads of spam threads, and old ones that have been dead for a month or two are frequently bumped and then the spammers flood them again.

All spam megathreads need locked, and then any thread growing to over say 5 pages needs actively monitored by a dedicated board mod. Within 5 pages OPs question is usually (not always) answered, there is no ongoing discussion, and the comments are just generic one or two liners posted to meet bounty requirements.

The more people report them the less they gonna be, now the sig. spam is reduced and the new threads should not be so many as before. Btw those megatheads are perfect for plagiarism hunting.

Hopefully soon Piggy and LoyceV can use their bots/scripts to scan through for copy/pasting.

I’ve been reporting quite a few spam megathreads lately, but it has reminded me of the Sisyphus myth, where a man pushes a rock up a mountain, only to see it roll it down when he arrives at the top. Then, he goes down, and starts pushing it up again.

I’m saying this because I can report lots of threads, but new ones can be opened. In fact, they are opened every they. And in many cases, you cannot report them as soon as they are opened because their OP is somewhat interesting, but they turn into spam megatheads later on.

What do you think about it?