Topic: Just remove signatures already. As in delete, disable, gone. - page 25. (Read 44870 times)

We actually ended paying per post count two days ago, I agree it definitely was watering down the quality of posts on this forum to a drastic degree. For anyone wondering we honestly did try hard to prevent spam in the campaign with last round reduced down to senior/hero members only and half of the seniors cut out but when the incentive to post is so high, spam is impossible to prevent. I still feel bad for popularizing this disruptive form of advertisement.

If you want this issue to be solved entirely it's simple, you just ban campaigns that pay per post. If you are paying a fixed amount for advertising depending on a user's rank then there is no reason to believe spam would increase as a result.

It's important to also make it more difficult to evade bans and outright ban the sale of accounts.

The work you do is appreciated but still I see "pointless post after pointless post" that are basically no better than the old +1's generally with PrimeDice in their sig (the number one sponsor of useless posts on this forum IMO).

Maybe the sponsor should be banned (then they might be more picky about who they let post for them)?

Perhaps also sigs could be limited to not appear in any "useful boards" (that way they useless posters can just post in useless boards such as Lending).

THANK YOU BadBear and all the others who work so hard to keep this place as clean as it is.  Just the number of posts simply moved from the incorrect sub-forums to the correct sub-forums is mind boggling - let alone the amount of crap that does get deleted and the number of obvious spammers that do get banned.

I can't even begin to imagine how bad it would be here without your totally appreciated efforts and the efforts of all the others who work here.

what bothers me most is that even senior members are willing to advertise obvious schemes and scams in order to get a few satoshis over advertising casinos which pay less than the obvious scams.

Ban's aren't that rare, banned almost 50 accounts today, closing in on 400 for the week, with thousands of posts deleted. Making new accounts isn't very effective with the signature restrictions, if they do they'll be more careful because of the time invested. It's easy to pretend we don't do anything because you don't see it, but reality is we do quite a lot.

But the quality of the posts remains poor.

You can disable signatures in the settings. Cleans everything up nicely:

Profile > Look and Layout Preferences > Don't show users' signatures

good idea 

I agree.

You guys are fighting windmills here.
People on this forum are trading trust, spamming (also without paid signatures). Bans are very rare and even if they occur the spammers just make another account, which takes them less than 5 minutes.
Spammy posts are rarely removed, even if the spammers are banned their crap stays there.
Some of the known scammers (like Karpeles) are still in the default trust for some unknown reason...
With all of the above you're focusing on paid signatures?

Simple supply and demand - there's demand for advertising, so people are paying for it. You have the choice to hide the signatures and/or to ignore the posters, just as the moderators can ban the spammers.
As someone said earlier in the thread: don't be selfish. There are newbies here, who want to earn their first bitcoin, and the signature campaigns are one of the easiest ways to do it.

Remove the signatures! content is sinking

1665

(I have a paid sig, so my comment could be seen as biased)

I read a lot of threads but do not post very much. Most contentless/pointless comments are not made by members with paid signatures. Take a look at the off-topic or marketplace section, you will find that most "spammers" have no paid sigs. If members wish to increase their activity score, they only need to post 1 per day, spamming doesn't help at all. So why do they spam? I honestly don't know, I can only guess they genuinely likes to chat?

I have been here for over a year, I have felt post quality degraded too, but has it really?

Popularity - More people around the world are gathering here. We are surely going to have more bitcoin newbies.
Dilution - I think good quality threads has been diluted and lost in a sea of spam. Quality threads are still here, just buried.
Expectation - When one learns more about bitcoin, posts which were previously "interesting" or "quality" posts becomes boring. Not because of the change in actual quality, but the more knowledgeable reader expects more.

To be frank, there really isn't much going on right now to have "quality" discussions everyday.

And who will determine what is a legit sig and what is not? Sounds like socialism to me.

I suggest a) remove all signatures b) reduce the interval between posts for newbies because waiting sucks. 6 minutes is too long. Make it 1 minute instead.

In the meantime you can disable signatures in your profile under 'look and layout preferences' > 'Don't show users' signatures.' BTW this option is probably going to be used to justify keeping signatures around. "Why you can disable it if you don't like it" they will say.

Couldnt agree more.

643 for me

This approach worked better when ignored posters got feedback by having their post count change colors. That had to be removed because it was bogging down the response of the forum.

Now there is no feedback, either to the posters themselves or the people paying them.

Making signatures less visually annoying won't do much to get rid of the flood of low-content posts.

Paid posters will still get paid per-post.

If I had the choice I'd restrict everyone to the limitations imposed to regular members: no big letters, no colors, links allowed. That's more than enough for a signature.

Many people who use the sig campaigns add a lot to the conversations here and many do not also.  If you come across someone who is not adding to the conversation why don't you just ignore them by clicking the ignore button?  I've ignored people by mistake and I wasn't aware they've been ignored until I realize I can't read their post..  A simple click would solve the problem of you having to read their posts.

Why should people who don't lessen the quality of the forum have to suffer because you don't ignore people?  Why don't you complain about the people making multiple accounts for scams or just spreading bull all day.  Also the people who don't bother to read anything before asking a question and cluttering up threads?  By the way sig campaigners answer those peoples questions quite often which is very helpful...

This forum is not just for Cryptographers and programmers and the fact that you don't understand that is very telling of your mindset.  It's also for people who want to learn more about cryptography and the only way for that to happen is to have a discussion with those that no more then them on the topic.  The campaigns have attracted many new people to the forum, I have no doubt, and I'm sure they've read many quality posts from people involved in a campaign.  I've gotten more positive replies on the forum then negative so I think you're drastically overstating the damage to the forum.

 It's sad you can't appreciate that a unique job was created for the forum users.   It sets an example for all to see how beneficial Bitcoin can be for people all over the planet hoping to acquire some Bitcoins for doing a service.  I've honestly given serious consideration to removing my sig and posting more then I ever.  Just to prove the point that sigs  aren't the problem, it's a tool like a gun and in the wrong hands it can be dangerous.  But you don't see guns being banned across the bored now do you?  No because not everyone misuses them and they have a valuable purpose!