Topic: Just remove signatures already. As in delete, disable, gone. - page 4. (Read 44870 times)

There's a logical fallacy here.  You say that "all online companies/interns are mainly based on ads", which I take to mean that online companies rely on ads for promoting their business.  Then you suggest that this leads to "if ads are disabled, there will not be a single traffic in this forum except ...".   But it's hard to see how this follows.  You seem to have put the cart before the horse, so to speak.  People don't come to this forum in order to view the ads.  People come to this forum in order to discuss bitcoin topics.  People place ads in this forum because there are people here discussing bitcoin topics.  If the ads go away, that doesn't suggest that the people will not continue to discuss bitcoin topics.  In fact, it's the other way around.  If people stop coming here to discuss bitcoin topics (for whatever reason), then surely advertizers will no longer be interested in posting ads here (as there would be no one looking at them).

Yes! I'm fully aware of that fact. I just didn't mention that on my previous post itself. It's just an instance to show OP how much traction can an ad get from this forum.

Yeah, no. I know that I would likely still be around (along with a lot of other members) should signature campaigns be banned. I am just using this as a means of getting some pocket money, same as (I expect) a decent amount of other members.

That doesn't help anything, as the post quality would still remain the same shit regardless of if you could see the signatures or not.

I wouldn't be so sure; if things carry on as they do now the spam from worthless members would become so large the forum would likely have no option but to ban paid signatures.

Those statistics are for the ads placed on the forum (below the first post of each thread/page), not signature advertisements. At least do your research before trying to act smart.

No! Not at all!

If adding signatures are banned in this forum, or as soon as this announcement is made, the forum will start crippling on it's own.

Care to know why OP?

Because, all online companies/interns are mainly based on ads and if ads are disabled, there will not be a single traffic in this forum except admins, mods and some signature haters like you... YES! MARK MY WORDS.

Then google wouldn't have shown any ads on their pages.

So a possible solution for you:

• Try this script > https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/signature-adblock-script-050-1003570

• Check DannyHamilton's Ignore List and ignore everyone who's using signatures > (latest list till now) https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/my-personal-ignore-list-973843

Well, you can ignore me too since I'm using a paid signature and I won't care about it too.

Good luck with your ignoring spree and FYI, signatures will stay in this forum FOREVER.

Just check out the number of impressions every ad gets each round > https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

This is quite a naive assumption and the problem here is we have been tolerant of spam and spammy campaigns for far too long. People can learn about bitcoin and earn at the same time but that's almost certainly not what is happening with half the people on these spammy campaigns. These garbage posters are greedy and lazy and wont stop at any amount. They keep making garbage posts that get worse day after day because they know they can get paid for them. Why bother even writing a half-assed sentence when you can just make posts like these and get paid for them:






+15 more today.

Are you telling me he should be allowed to make and get paid for those posts? What's he learning about bitcoin there when all of his posts are in off-topic? He does the same thing 20 times a day because his campaign only pays for 20 posts and users like him are the vast majority on yobit and secondstrade. If you check out his profile you will also see he has been marked as a scammer by several people and is showing up red and most campaigns wont accept such users but yobit will at a discounted rate because they don't care who advertises for them as long as they do and their advert is plastered everywhere and that's why something needs to be done about them because they have absolutely no interest in this forum other than to make money and they don't care what damage they do in the process.


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Here's my reasoning:  Most readers will pass right over those type of posts and not even pay attention to the signatures included within them; therefore, those who are running the signature campaigns will be injecting money into the blochchain for ineffective advertising, and if they were smart enough, they would fix their leak by removing them from their campaign.  (Free market sorta philosophy.)

If I were to run a signature campaign....I would have a pay schedule based on merit and not quantity, where more constructive posts get paid more money.

Yes! (+1.5) Thank you for that point.  Who would get to decide what's "low quality" or "irrelevant?"  Would BTC core supporters get to decide or BTC XT supporters?  And, whose opinion will get more weight in that matter?  It just opens up doors that should remain closed in a decentralized sort of environment.....Right?

That would be too much work and unnecessary. We can all see which campaigns are the problem here without a points system. You're right that banning them wont stop them from paying out but it will be a big blow to them and their business if their main account is banned and most will probably just change their ways rather than have their account permabanned, but this is why I suggest some sort of tool for mods to either blanket ban an entire campaign's signature or the ability to remove a certain users signature. Bans already remove signatures and profile info so the ability to just remove a users signature shouldn't be too difficult though maybe just issuing more bans will be enough as if the signature isn't there then they wont get paid.


Hard/almost impossible to enforce. Besides, many campaigns already don't pay or include those subs but some people can make constructive posts in off topic anyway but it's the ones that don't that should be punished. Also, the people that spam in off topic would just start spamming in other sections where they're not prohibited so it's the shitposters that you need to deal with not where they can post.


It's the root of all sigspam but not all spam. It might not get rid of spam 100% but we all know that if signatures were banned completely there would be at least 50% less spam and a noticeable drop in drivel. Obviously there are many ways to try deal with it but for some the easiest solution is to just ban campaigns and they're not exactly wrong though as you said wouldn't get rid of it all but it'd be a simple and quick improvement..


I've offered to step up if they want a specific mod to deal with signature spammers and bans relating to them but currently only admins can temp ban people though I'm sure theymos could change the code to give Globals or certain other staff the ability to do so. I think that would help a lot as without a lot of people getting temp banned there's no reason for them to change their ways but most usually get the message after their first ban.

I would perhaps suggest sort of an affiliate banning system. For example, whenever someone on a certain campaign gets banned for spam posts then the campaign manager gains a point. Every 7 points or so is a weeks ban for the campaign manager. However, there would be a few problems with this. The first being that it would probably be a huge pain for the mods to keep up with. The second is that, if the campaign managers are using a bot to count posts, what difference would it make to them if they were banned or not? The bot could be banned, but that would be ruining it for everyone.

Another way to combat would be to perhaps prohibit campaign managers from paying for posts in Off Topic and Games and Rounds. If this were the case there would be little incentive for a lot of users to post said spam in said sections, and spam in the other sections could be handled accordingly by staff members. However, it would then be the problem of enforcing this rule. We could ban the campaign managers but that once again links with the second downside of my first suggestion.

I agree that signatures are a massive problem, however people seem to be acting like it is the root of the entire problem (the title of this thread as a great example). I tried to make the point of, while signatures are a massive part of the problem, it isn't the whole problem.

I appreciate that completely. Perhaps, if needed, there could be more Global Moderators/Staff members promoted to help handle said spam and temporary bans to take the pressure off the administrators. I can certainly think of some potential candidates who would be good for the job, there are likely more that I am missing.
Even if not permanent, there should definitely be action taken against users who repeatedly offend. In the example user you posted, perhaps deleting the posts and a PM warning would be sufficient. If the user would continue to offend a temp ban, followed by a nuke if they still refuse to comply. I understand that this is more work for staff members, but without staff intervention very little can be done against this problem.

Even if it isn't that subjective of a matter for the majority of these posts, a line should still be drawn out as to what is and isn't. I can make a long post saying exactly the same as what has already said in a thread before, does that make it constructive or not?

I think he means that there are not laws as general as that. Instead of "Don't do bad things" it's "Don't steal" or "Don't harm others". I believe that this is how it should be on this forum, which it already is to an extent.

You must live in a different IRL than me.

Or am I not seeing the sarcasm tag?

Correct. That's why I said that removing signatures completely should be the very last options as it harms the good people because of the actions of the bad. There are a LOT of users like the one that you quoted in this particular post. I'm all ears for solutions as this occasionally bothers me. I'm having a really difficult time finding good discussions lately. There are people that are even arguing whether this is completely correct which is beyond me. Constructive posts are not that subjective and it is easy to spot the difference between a constructive and useless post (by comparing with a high quality poster).

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My support for punishing campaign managers (or the service itself, i.e. their campaign is not allowed at all) is slowly increasing.

And that's why IRL we don't have laws prohibiting "bad things" or "things that are wrong."
"We should!" you say, "Why don't we?"
Well, because rules that poorly defined (open to interpretation) are junk rules, making a ruleset containing them a junk ruleset.
Let's try to create a set of rules that are not junk.

There's no doubt that signature campaigns bring a vast amount of traffic and activity to this site but it shouldn't be at the expense of the overall quality of the forum which is drastically degraded because of a couple of campaigns not doing anything to curb spam and paying newbs to shitpost daily without any consequence. There's at least a hundred users on yobit and secondstrade that could do with a weeks ban or more until they get the message (not to mention the campaigns themselves). These problem campaigns and users on them shouldn't be allowed to continue the way they are currently without punishments. If every campaign only accepted decent posters and didn't pay shitposters spammers would have no where to go and be forced to improve their posts if they want to earn. Many of the higher paying campaigns already do this but it's futile when spammers just get rejected when they know they will be accepted by yobit or secondstrade regardless of how shitty their posts are. If every campaign only paid decent posters the forum would clean itself up of sigspam naturally but this isn't going to happen without the co-operation of all the campaigns and if the problem ones don't clean up their act they should be forced to either with bans or blocking their signatures all together.


As others have mentioned they could be farmers but it's naive to think that signatures aren't a massive problem. Yes, people without signatures might make shitty posts and there will always be spammers on any forum but when those users without signatures join a campaign they're encouraged to make many more shitty posts and the problem here is there are campaigns that pay for them and it's those campaigns that need to be dealt with as the problem gets worse everyday when nothing is done about it. I agree more action needs to be taken by staff too but the admins have better and more important issues to handle than dealing with the massive amount of spammers especially when it should be the campaigns themselves that are doing the moderating on these matters.


I imagine it would be very difficult if not impossible to collect this sort of data but we can see it's a lot. Just take a look in the spammy off topic threads & giveaways in Games and Rounds and you'll see massive amounts of yobit and secondstrade signatures making one/two/three word posts or half-assed sentences at the most.


Cara actively seeks new campaigns out and pesters existing business on here to start them so that's why he is running a lot. Marco is fully employed by bit-x it seems so he probably doesn't have time nor actively seeks out new business.


This is quite a naive assumption and the problem here is we have been tolerant of spam and spammy campaigns for far too long. People can learn about bitcoin and earn at the same time but that's almost certainly not what is happening with half the people on these spammy campaigns. These garbage posters are greedy and lazy and wont stop at any amount. They keep making garbage posts that get worse day after day because they know they can get paid for them. Why bother even writing a half-assed sentence when you can just make posts like these and get paid for them:






+15 more today.

Are you telling me he should be allowed to make and get paid for those posts? What's he learning about bitcoin there when all of his posts are in off-topic? He does the same thing 20 times a day because his campaign only pays for 20 posts and users like him are the vast majority on yobit and secondstrade. If you check out his profile you will also see he has been marked as a scammer by several people and is showing up red and most campaigns wont accept such users but yobit will at a discounted rate because they don't care who advertises for them as long as they do and their advert is plastered everywhere and that's why something needs to be done about them because they have absolutely no interest in this forum other than to make money and they don't care what damage they do in the process.

i totally agree. it is just like the first time i start bitcoin. it is all due to dota 2 trading market that there is some use to it. otherwise i wont even be interested. those ppl after that come in is due to hype and looking for short profit. end up bitcoin take a hit. bitcoin community has been promote business to take up bitcoin as a mode of payment and this idea was really to push for more usage of bitcoin so it can be a reality as a virtual currency. so being here, and with all the diff campagin, you can clearly see that bitcoin is an amazing places where you can use it so easily.

Okay, if more people adopted bitcoin as a payment method, would that help or hurt bitcoin?  New adopters, or new interests, are experimenting with the technology.  They're trying to figure out what the technology has to offer in exchange for their fiat....Why should they trade their hard earned cash for a technology they don't quite understand?  Now, the signature campaigns are, in my opinion, a brilliant idea that promotes distribution of the technology.  We cannot expect those who are new to the realm of bitcoin to put forth a whole lot of effort into a post on a subject they don't quite understand.  They're still trying to figure out why they should trade their hard earned dollar for an invisible alphanumeric number with which they can't even buy a beer.  If we are tolerant, overtime, they will become more knowledgeable and contribute more constructive posts.

On the other hand, if we discourage those who are ignorant of the technology and encourage a more exclusive group of followers, then we're defeating the whole purpose of the technology....it becomes more centralized, becomes more factionist so to speak, more elitist if you will.  Once that happens, the whole experiment is doomed and the volume will start dropping off significantly.

Anyway, once these "garbage posters" get up enough coin to have some skin in the game...they'll realize the value of the technology, their interests will bloom, and their attitudes toward the forum will become more constructive.  And, those who do not become enlightened by the technology will disappear.

The fact that a post is "low quality" or "irrelevant" is very subjective, and human judgment needs to be made to make this determination.

Would be a huge leap forward.
Odd that a community with so many coders, i.e. people who work with and understand closed formal systems, seems set against doing just that. 

I think the most obvious solution is more transparency as to how much individual campaigns, and individual campaign managers harm the forum. The forum could publish how many posts were deleted every week from people who are participating in individual campaigns (and in campaigns managed by specific campaign managers), the forum could publish how many users are banned (for insubstantial posts + paid signatures, and other reasons) in individual campaigns and in campaigns managed by individual campaign managers.

From the looks of it, the market is engaging in somewhat of self-regulation. For example, the fact that marcotheminer was entrusted by bit-x with 50BTC, and paid out participants with that 50BTC without incident would imply that many others would trust him to manage additional signature campaigns, however this largely has not been the case. On the other hand, carra23, who has essentially zero prior trading history, which would imply that she should not be trusted with large amounts of bitcoin, has been able to do (what I think more of less everyone would agree is) a good job of preventing low quality posters from entering her campaigns, and when low quality posters do get into her campaigns, she does a good job of managing the low quality posts, and as a result she has been able to generate a large amounts of additional business.

I was just giving an example of when it wasn't due to a signature.
As you said above, account farming is a thing. I'm sure that the sale of accounts would still be around, though likely not as much, even with paid signatures disabled. There would still then be low quality posts from people trying to boost their accounts to sell.
How do we stop account farming? We do what I suggested. We tighten the grip on any low quality post, irrelevant if they have a signature or not. The only way to do this that I can see is create a solid ruleset on what is and isn't allowed in a post and enforce that ruleset strictly. This would be the only way to deincentivize low quality posting.

Account farming. It's a thing.
Nothing is the root of all evil, we have to settle for making things better piecemeal, symptomatically even.
Paid signatures don't disincentivize spam/low quality posting, so let's get rid of them & make this forum a [slightly] better place.
Then we can keep making it better, one step at a time.

Call me biased as I am wearing one, but I don't think a paid signature is really the problem. I see (new) members spamming low quality posts without the use of signatures about as often as I see low quality posts from members wearing a signature ad.
While I am not trying to bash the moderation of this forum at all; all of the staff do a great job keeping the forum clean, I think there should be perhaps some better defined guidelines against what is and isn't a spam post and strict moderation on said posts.
Paid signatures do incentivize spam/low quality posting, but I don't believe that they are the overall root of the problem.