Topic: It's quite time for some cooperation or moderation toward signature campaigns. (Read 1075 times)

There really aren't that many people willing to give their best though. Each campaign(the 1s that I manage) only has so many open spots per rank. No matter who is in the spot in most cases, users are only willing to post enough to get paid. They are not posting because they like a topic, they are not posting because they want to inform others about a subject in most cases, they are posting to be paid. If they're being paid for 20 posts, then they do 20 posts. Every now and then I get a guy who is paid for 20-25 posts per week and they do 40-50 posts a week.

It all comes down to the campaign managers and the companies being responsible for their participants..

I think if a paid poster gets banned for spamming then whoever is paying them to do so should recieve a stern warning, meaning the campaign manager and the representetives of the company..

- Rewards are given based on post count; and
- More post count generally lowers post quality. << externalities

Since it is highly improbable that we change the reward based on post quality, not quantity. And because of this issue:

Campaign Operators:

Signature Campaigns are a great way to introduce your business and advertise your services to the bitcoin ecosystem but this cannot be abused by you paying people to make poor contributions en masse. As a signature campaign operator you will ultimately be held responsible for the quality of posts of users bearing your signature advertisement and you will need to monitor your users closely or it will be quickly abused. If you are running a campaign and it becomes blatantly obvious to Staff that you are doing little to nothing to stop spam on your campaign you will be issued a PM warning by a Global Moderator that you need to make immediate improvements to curb low-quality posts. You will have 7 days to remove low-quality posters and respond to the message detailing what you are going to do to make changes to your campaign to reduce the amount of spam. If improvements are not noticeable within 21 days of that and Staff do not believe you are doing enough to prevent low quality posts your signatures will be blacklisted from the forum by an Admin and you will no longer be permitted to advertise here in such a way. The Staff and Admins do not want to have to do this but it's a last resort in an attempt to clean up the forum as signature campaigns cannot continue to operate here in such a lazy way as it is not fair that others have to go through pages of drivel to find anything of substance nor should Staff be left to clean up the mess you are paying people to make.

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Types of campaigns:

There are generally two types of campaigns: 'Fixed' campaigns which offer a fixed amount of bitcoins for a minimum of X amount of posts and 'Pay Per Post' which is pretty self-explanatory. Pay Per Post campaigns pay for every post that a user makes and thus tend to be the most abused whilst fixed campaigns tend to limit the amount of spam generated. It's up to you which campaign you choose and both are fine just as long as you have someone monitoring them. If you don't then either form of campaign will be abused. If you want to check out or compare other signature campaigns an overview of all the currently active ones can be found here.

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Please note: You as a campaign will not be warned or have your signatures removed for having a handful of low quality posters on your campaign especially if they're quickly dealt with. We accept that no campaign will be able to stop spam 100% of the time but these guidelines are there for the campaigns where it becomes blatantly obvious they are doing little to nothing at all to try prevent spam and are happily paying people to post rubbish continually even after a warning. Please monitor your users closely and there should be no issues.

Stop.

People report posts, yes? I've actually smashed through hundreds of posts in the 777Coin and Bitvest campaigns.

And regarding the plagiarism issue: it's simple enough to automate the process. We already have some people who have checked entire post histories for plagiarism, so I don't see why the same cannot be done for a campaign cycle across a few dozen users.

Maybe managers should hire one or two qualified post reviewer (similar to peer review) as a quality controller. Hence, even with the 20-25 post per week, no one will complain about the quality.

50 members per campaign posting 25 posts each (minimum) equals 1250 posts per week. Not to mention that sometimes only parts of the post are plagiarized so during the initial checking he could think everything is ok when in fact 2 out of the total 20 sentences are copy/pasted.

My question to campaign managers, would you really go through all this hassle?

Same for plagiarism, you have been paying accounts to plagerise? Permaban..

Like I said payrate are only subjected to minimum payment, projects that's are capable of paying more are free to increase their payrate pay rank. These too has to be match with a reasonable amount of maximum post count per week (haven't come to a conclusion of any number that would be suitable).

We already have a pretty comprehensive set of rules for both campaign managers and participants here: Signature Campaign Guidelines (read this before starting or joining a campaign).

This sticky gives very clear guidelines for what is considered spam, and what bans will be handed out to signature spammers.

Assuming you know who's responsible for the campaign.

Any forum rules regarding campaigns - whether it's the OP's "minimum wage" or what you're suggesting - can work only if the forum controls all signatures, i.e. instead of being able to enter custom bbcode users would have to choose from a list of "approved" campaigns and that way you can tie them to managers etc. That obviously creates problems for everyone who just wants a personal unpaid signature.

Not me..
I just went on 2 small vacations and didn't touch my laptop for 3 days each.. No way I am posting from the Holiday Inn when I could be enjoying a drink with fine company, to make my quota of posts, to make only a few dollars a week..

Isn't it better to just hire more people? Enforcing minimum weekly post counts probably has a negative effect on post quality if people know they *have* to post enough or they'll be kicked out of the campaign.

This minimum post to get paid I do feel encourages a bit more spam. Just my view. Others might feel differently

Then the participant will be likely removed due to burst posting.  

Isn't it better to just hire more people? Enforcing minimum weekly post counts probably has a negative effect on post quality if people know they *have* to post enough or they'll be kicked out of the campaign.

If there's concern about transaction fees (especially if fees increase), people could always create accounts on whatever service they advertise and get paid there.

Yes, some have a life outside this forum. I do as well, but I login every day. I even have to take a laptop with me on vacations with my family to ensure that campaigns are paid out even if I am out of town. God forbid I'm late paying everyone. Everyone is not me, I get that but you cannot tell me that making 3 or less posts in a day is a rough task to do. Honestly takes users less than 20 minutes of being online to do so.

Requiring users to make a specific number of posts is really needed. A user making only 5 posts per week is not helpful.

Then the participant will be likely removed due to burst posting. 

This minimum post to get paid I do feel encourages a bit more spam. Just my view. Others might feel differently.

Honestly takes users less than 20 minutes of being online to do so.

The problem I feel is the you must make "X" posts to get paid "Y" (like mintdice turned into) campaigns as opposed to pay per post  There is life outside the forum, and it can change and things can come up. Looking at the raw numbers of the sheet I have done

Week 1 = 39 posts
Week 2 = 35 posts
Week 3 = 36 posts
Week 4 = 34 posts
Week 5 = 32 posts

Some of those are in the excluded boards but all in all I have been above 30 every week.

As of today 1/2 way though the posting week I figure I am at about 16 posts.

If something happened today that would cause me to go offline for 5 days I would not make the number for this week.
AND since I would lose a day or 2 of posting into the next week I would feel that I would have to "post for the sake of posting" to make my numbers.

In the old way, with some bare requirements to post at least 5 in the gambling forum and and a lower number of required posts overall it took the pressure off so if something came up, it came up and you just made a bit less those weeks.

This minimum post to get paid I do feel encourages a bit more spam. Just my view. Others might feel differently.

-Dave

There really aren't that many people willing to give their best though. Each campaign(the 1s that I manage) only has so many open spots per rank. No matter who is in the spot in most cases, users are only willing to post enough to get paid. They are not posting because they like a topic, they are not posting because they want to inform others about a subject in most cases, they are posting to be paid. If they're being paid for 20 posts, then they do 20 posts. Every now and then I get a guy who is paid for 20-25 posts per week and they do 40-50 posts a week.

Look at suchmoons small sample Effect of Signature Bans. Even though it's a small sample size, it is a correct view of what happens when users are banned from wearing signatures. Users just fade away into nothing in most cases.

I'm not against users making money obviously, and I would love for everyone to make more money. Users need to stop thinking only about themselves though. When they join campaigns, their first thought isn't how can I help this company. Their first thought isn't to log in to the website and check out the platform. All they are thinking is please accept me so i can make some money.

I'm not trying to personally attack you, my answers in most cases are directed towards everyone but you are the one who posted the topic and the 1 I am responding to. Everyone has an opinion and I feel they should be free to post their opinion, whether I agree or not.

I don't think it's a huge issue if these campaigns move their management off-site. If we start banning campaigns and their participants which are largely spamming, future campaigns will very quickly learn to employ a manager who actually pays attention to post quality.

I know I'm not in a position to give you any suggestions on this but how about punishing the offenders so they learn from their mistakes, there are far more individual willing to give in their best for the successful of the project. An extra amount of post isn't much of a deal irrespective of you not been paid for them.

PS: No personal attacks please lets keep the conversation professional.

If we start banning campaigns and their participants which are largely spamming, future campaigns will very quickly learn to employ a manager who actually pays attention to post quality.

Any forum rules regarding campaigns - whether it's the OP's "minimum wage" or what you're suggesting - can work only if the forum controls all signatures

~

I have lowered the minimum weekly post count to 20 posts in most campaigns depending on the payrate, but at the same time companies want as much bang for their buck as they can get.

I agree with many of the points above that enforcing some sort of minimum wage does little to address the underlying problem, and is mostly an unworkable solution.

So, I kinda slightly disagree on saying "Signature campaigns are a privilege". It's an opportunity for users to get some financial benefit with the things they already are doing and from the companies perspective - it's a way to monetize the traffic of this forum so that they can build up a business. Both party are getting benefited.

You are suggesting a cartel mate...

minimum wage centralized price control systems are always counter productive and IMO are not a solution to these issues here.

Similarly almost all the users has their own images and in a signature campaign, the image of a user reflects their worth. Everything has it's own price.

The biggest thing about posters that join campaigns that pisses me off is the fact that if the post rate is 20 posts per week, guess how many they do? 20 damn posts right on the nose, then they complain because 1 or 2 posts got deleted and they didn't get paid.

Stop doing the bare minimum people. Help the companies that hired you and make signature campaigns worth the money. Otherwise take the money you make and be happy.

Signature campaigns are a privilege, ~snip~

Not sure why you think you deserve more money for posting on a forum.

The biggest thing about posters that join campaigns that pisses me off is the fact that if the post rate is 20 posts per week, guess how many they do? 20 damn posts right on the nose, then they complain because 1 or 2 posts got deleted and they didn't get paid.

That can be worked on too, for each $5000 price gain of bitcoin the minimum payrate can be revisited and adjusted in a manner it would be suitable for both the projects and campaign participants. I don't intend project paying as much as your example suggested, I used the current ~$10,000 bitcoin price to make this suggestion. The idea is the participants are been paid poorly and when that's the case what do you expect the output to be like?

Garbage in, garbage out. Take a closer look at well paying campaign, the quality of post been delivered by the participants are way above the others, in some instances, the posts counts (irrespective of them been paid for those extra post counts or not) are even more because this guys are been encourage by the payrate they recieve. We're humans here not robot don't forget that, we work with emotions.

However, it's not that as easy as for each projects to pay high amount initially, you know everyone wants least cost with higher output. Projects will try to reduce their cost.
On the other hand, imagine BTC is at ATH. 0.01 BTC = $200 for 25 posts max, I don't think with current rate, much people will be interested to post 25+ in a week (It depends on user too, Royse posts 100+ each week although he is not required to do so).

Signature images are making too much of a mess, so adding them is now disabled for everyone. Existing ones have not been removed, but they will be removed next time you change anything on that profile page.

What are everyone's ideas for improving post quality?

I have mostly ruled out:

 - Removing signatures or sig ads globally.
 - Requiring payment to wear sig ads.
 - Banning account sales.

There is no rules on minimum pay rates to avoid spam, in my opinion.
A campaign results in spam or not from their participants, it mainly depends on their management style and rule:

• Minimum characters of posts: Despite of the fact that post length is not the only factor to determine post quality, but it should be used as one of requirements to prevent spam.
• Time gaps between posts: Require time gaps between posts (such as 30 minutes) might prevent spam. By the way, I would like to emphasize that most of experienced managers don't have this rule or at least exactly minimum time gaps, but they have their own rights to judge which posts are burst-posting ones.
• Maximum of post cap per day to avoid both spam and burst-post
• Each companies have their own funds to run their campaigns, so they should have fair chances to run their ones here. As the core vision of theymos is maintaining a place for good newbies (as well as good start-ups, IMO).
• The management style of campaign managers will play important role to prevent spam. Managers will kick out spammers or reject to pay for spammers. So they will be kicked out or will do change their posting style (at least within period they join such strictly-managed ones)
• Campaigns need to be run in a long period to have effects in return for companies, so companies should expand their campaigns to as more weeks as possible with their funds for that purpose

Payrate is just one of vital components for successful campaign. I agree with payrate's contribution to quality of participants for each campaign, but it is not enough. You can pay a participant 0.005 BTC per post, but if you (as manager) or others play as managers of campaign don't have strict rules to choose participants, and after that to check their post quality before sending payment, such campaigns will end with failures and spam. Even good posters will decrease their post quality if managers are not strictly manage after choosing them into campaigns. In campaigns I joined, there are sometimes managers have to send warning message after payment sent, because some of participants show signal to turn into burst posting, that is not good for managers, and for companies.

Yobit, months ago, run their campaign with high payrates, but there is no one says that campaign is a successful one. That campaign attracted both spammers and good posters. Spammers banned temporarily if reported by users; good posters did not ban because they made posts that are good enough to not get reports from users. Because of terrible management, the number of spammers overwhelmed the number of good posters among Yobit participants.

Like I said payrate are only subjected to minimum payment, projects that's are capable of paying more are free to increase their payrate pay rank.

Anyway, this is an exciting topic, but maybe we should move somewhere else. Anyone care to create a thread about this issue? It would be best to give @eternalgloom peace of mind and wish him good luck for his future endeavors.

Hence, how to drive up pay rates? I only know to cut supply (less shitposters sigcamp participants) or increase demand (more casinos service providers).

Or simply, the campaign manager should come into an agreement to set a minimum payrate per rank then projects willing to pay participants above the minimum payrate are free to do so but no projects will pay below the minimum. This way project hoping to employ the best posters on the forum will be forced to increase their payrate to attract them. Some signature payrate are just so ridiculous they only attracts spamming.

For the payrate, I recommend minimum;
Member = 0.002BTC
Full member = 0.004BTC
Snr member = 0.006BTC
Hero member  = 0.008BTC
Legendary  = 0.01BTC