Topic: [LIST] ANN threads that are using bumping services - page 5. (Read 7298 times)

Not PDX, another topic that had similar situation like PDX but it wasn't deleted, my report is still unhandled. In past, similar threads usually got deleted so I was surprised that such an obvious case was ignored.




Well, good to hear that it's still possibility, no matter how rare it happens.

PDX? I thought the bounty thread was moved to the trashcan or are you talking about another one I've missed?


I don't usually, I generally try to give the benefit of the doubt, but this one in particular was so painfully obviously using a bumping service, and the fact that it was a locked thread, and pretty much no one else showed an interest the entire thread, apart from a few who happened upon it at some point, asked a question, and never returned. So, usually I don't completely remove threads unless I get proof of bumping, but since most of it was already gone, their social channels etc, I could only use my common sense, and it was just one of the worse ones out there.

I have seen global moderators take a similar approach now, and again. Probably for the more extreme examples. I wouldn't expect it every time though, as I usually like to take the cautious route, and go through it all one by one. However, this was just an exceptional case, and the users which were contributing to the spam were already banned, presumably because of the bumping.

Will do! Can you please check the case that I mentioned in one of my previous posts, where project advertised giving tokens in exchange for comments, but they did it via thier telegram group. Isn't that breaking forum rules as well?


Great to hear that is possible! Back in October 2020 I started thread in Meta asking exactly that


Unfortunately I never got a reply from forum stuff regarding my question. but for me it was kinda logical  to remove those thread completely if there is absolutely nothing else going on, except those thread bumpers leaving their crap. By using that approach, you can make your life much easier as bunch of those threads that can be found on the list fall under that category.

btcltcdigger was likely the announcement manager, and wasn't involved with the project itself. The amount of spam, and sockpuppets communicating there was ridiculous. I started to delete each post individually, however I quickly come to realise that pretty much no one else posted on the thread, but the same accounts that continued going back, and forth with mostly nonsense. I removed the thread completely. I suspect it was the people behind the project that hired a bumping service, and not necessarily the announcement manager. Though, that's largely an assumption rather than a matter of fact.

Anyway, most of the accounts that were going back, and forth were banned already, so a global moderator had already dealt with most of them.

Heads-up:

Since my lat post I cleaned the following topics:


Cleaned - 179 posts reported.


Cleaned - 246 posts reported.


I found this topic by pure chance, while cleaning the above mentioned one. I saw Rikafip's post and I found this ANN thread. I found it and it was also full of spam. I don't know why it was not added here, but I reported 427 posts of this thread.



Cleaned all 4 threads - I reported a total of 1326 posts. ILCOIN was second biggest topic I ever cleand, after PHORE, with 71 pages / 1169 reports and it took a lot of effort to clean. At the moment the topic was reduced to 32 pages but I still have hundreds of unhandled reportes from it, which means it'll remain very short. What amazed me though was that this ANN thread was started by a member with reputation here, btcltcdigger. He is a Hero member and I really wonder why he allowed that spam inside his topic... What is even more interesting is that he never involved in his own thread. He just posted the ANN and that was all. Perhaps, if he sees this post, he may come with an explanation.

All in all, I reported 2262 posts from all these topics!

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Having these topics also cleaned, the remaining ones are the three monster topics mentioned in my previous post, summing a total of 469 pages:



I will try to take care of them this week.

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Great job, Ratimov, thank you. If you can, please take a look at this other Russian topic. I mentioned it in a previous post.

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Cheers!


Ohhh yeahhhh! Imagine that since January 1st I reported almost as many good reports (10400) as I did it in previous 2 years (13727)! It feels amazing! 

Yeah, someone else has already moved it to the trashcan, if you find bounties which are offering an incentive to post, report them right away, and they'll be handled appropriately. Usually, by moving the thread to the trashcan, and then banning the OP, which is exactly what has happened in this case.

Good job. There's a lot that tend to do this by the way.

I am posting this here even though I think they didn't hire bumping service, but since we have forum staff active here I thought it won't hurt to share it here.

So, while browsing altcoin section I noticed some weird activity in 🔥✅[ANN]🔥 PDX Coin | Global Payments and Digital Banking Platform & App thread. It didn't quite look like standard bumping service activity, so I checked their bounty thread and saw that as a part of their signature campaign, participants have to write at least 3 posts in their own ANN.




@Welsh This is a clear violation of the rule found in altcoin section, right, which says that "Incentivising posting within one or more threads is not allowed".

Sweet, I know I've probably handled around 4000/5000 of the reports in the last week, obviously other moderators have pitched in too, but I didn't know the exact number. Going by those numbers though I expect we could potentially hit 30k reports in this months period, which would be quite something.

Most of the crap from these threads have been cleaned though, so I expect this will be slowing down in the coming months. Cheers for the help though, definitely feels quite therapeutic to clean up the forum, doesn't it?

Heads-up:

Since my lat post I cleaned the following topics:


Cleaned both - 343 reports. First topic was already cleand (I reported just 1 post from it). Second topic was a monster one, with 28 pages and I had to report 342 posts from it. Actually I had to report all 556 posts from it, but a mod was ahead of me and started to delete the topic posts before I had time to report them all Now it seems the topic was entirely trashed. Great job mod!

Having these 2 threads cleaned as well I finished cleaning everything from page 2 of current topic. Now I am at page 1.


Cleaned all 3 topics - 522 reports. MASS was by far the most difficult topic to clean from I cleaned so far. First of all, it had 32 pages. Second of all, it was full with both good and spam posts, made also not only by newbies. I had to spend several hours to read carefully each post... Many were at the limit between spam and offering a useful information... It was horror to clean this topic! Absolutely horror! I reported 468 posts from MASS topic.


Cleaned - 21 reports.


Cleaned - 35 reports.


Both threads as previously cleaned as I had to report only 8 posts.


I could not take care of this, as it's written in Russian. Maybe a Russian speaker can take a look.


Here I cleaned second topic - 26 reports.
Coco's topic was deleted, as I stated above, but the old one still exists and it has 103 pages. Emirex has 115 pages. I will leave for later these ones, together with the topic mentioned at post 12 (Modul topic), lattest one having 251 pages. After I finish cleaning all remaining topics I will take care of these 3 monster topics too.


This thread was also cleaned, as I had to report just 1 post.

All in all, I reported 845 posts from all these topics!

The only topics remaining to be cleaned (together with the 3 ones mentioned above) are: Crybet, the one from post 6 and the ones from post 3 (four topics), meaning a total of 9 topics. They may seem few, but they have 592 pages and more than 11.800 posts to be checked

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Roger that In case you need any kind of help, please let me know.

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At the end of December (around Christmas) I had 8032 good reports. Now I have 22.327 and 328 pending to be handled. And on January 1st I had 13.737 good reports. Therefore in the last days we certainly cleaned more than 5000


I also intend to to a double check over all topics after I finish passing through the remaining ones -- just to make sure I reported everything and, in case some are still active (the ones mentioned from December to present could be active) to re-clean them

With the amount of effort everyone's put in recently, I suspect we'll have another 20k report month ahead of us.

Yeah, some were active fairly recent. Although, I usually just scour threads in the first couple of pages of the Altcoin sections these days, since they're at least getting actively viewed by a large amount of users. I will revisit from time to time though, as it's much more manageable to catch them early, and remove their posts bit by bit, rather than having to report, and delete thousands of reports.

I appreciate the effort from everyone here though, we've probably removed over 5000 posts in the last few days/weeks. That's probably completely underestimating the real amount too.

Imho, no need to waste time of that since I think that using current "Status" column should be enough, I'll try to sort that out this weekend when I have a little bit more free time. I appreciate the offer though. 👍



Majority of those threads simply cancel that bumping service when they see that their thread is going nowhere and posts have been deleted constantly day after day. But yeah, it's not a bad idea to revisit the threads occasionally as some of them will attempt the same thing, thinking that they lost the attention.

I plan on merging the consecutive posts that have been left on the original list. I'll then review the replies in this thread.

Sweet, I guess my overall message was in the future don't be afraid of reporting the thread, and indicating in the report field that you suspect certain users are bumping the thread or engaging in fake conversations. It's only one bad report, and I'm sure the local moderators would appreciate more reports that could potentially clean up their section.

As far as I can tell a lot of the threads in the original post are now somewhat cleaned apart from a few exceptions which will take a little longer to go through. I've likely revisit them from time to time to see if we've got any new spam waves, though judging by the activity of a lot of them, I suspect whoever has been behind the spam waves have either quit or moved on.

We have Russian speaking moderators which are pretty active. So, you can just report them if you suspect something is up. You don't necessarily need to know the language to report if you've recognized a pattern, the moderators that can speak the language (not limited to Russian) can then review it. Yeah, there's probably a slightly higher chance of getting a bad report, but really it doesn't matter all that much.

I personally won't act on a report that I don't understand the language of. We have local moderators for a reason .

 

Heads-up:

Since my last post I cleaned the following topics:


Cleaned - 44 reports.


Cleaned - 50 reports.


I could not access first topic. Probably it was deleted... I cleaned second one though - 41 reports.


I think this was previously cleand by someone else. Here I had only 7 posts to report.


Sadly, I could not do anything for this topic, as I do not know Russian. Maybe Welsh can take a look though...


Cleaned both - 128 posts reported.


This was another monster thread, having 35 pages full of spam. I had to report 611 posts in this case.

All in all, I reported 906 posts from all these topics!

Now I am at post #21 and I'll continue from this one backwards.

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As far as I see, there are only 18 topics remaining to be cleaned. I think I can reach the deadline I wrote above

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It's okay, I can do it for you if you want If you look at my post, you'll see that I asked if you would like me to do it I will present you a draft here if you like and see how it goes.

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Thank you!


I already did that a few days ago Look above.

Ah sorry, completely missed that one.

Regarding the first suggestion about updating the status, you are absolutely right. I planned to do that for quite some time, but somehow always found the reason to postpone it. I will definitely try to do that soon, when I have a little bit more free time.

About adding one more column, maybe I should simply edit current status with "Cleaned" and sort that out in a more convenient way, isntead adding one more column as it would take some time considering size of the list. Anyway, will think about it.

It's more based on the moderator handling it. I usually merge these types of posts, and handle the post as good. Though, other moderators obviously handle it differently. If you wanted a specific answer as to why they wasn't handled good you'd have to contact the moderator that handled it, though that can be difficult to determine. For example, if you take a look at some of the threads which you've been reporting in you'll find myself, and Mprep merging posts that are both news, and replying to other users consecutively. Usually, its to better organize the thread, and not for it to be annoying for users to navigate.

Reserve posts are allowed because sometimes its cleaner to do so, and there is a limit to the amount of characters in a post, albeit its pretty high.

If you would find it easier to report one post, and indicate in the report message that there's much more spam in the thread itself, then that's perfectly fine! Sometimes with large threads, and a lot of other discussion going on its more convenient to moderators to have individual posts reported, but if your limited for time reporting a single post is more than acceptable, and the moderator handling it will always read the report message before handling it.

You wouldn't be alone, a number of users have done this in the past, and its sometimes more efficient for everyone.

Heads-up:

Since my last post I cleaned the following topics:


I cleaned the English topic - 96 reports.


I cleaned this one too - 97 reports.

With these two topics I also finished page 3 of this thread. Now I am at page 2.

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Cleaned - 23 reports.


Here I reported a total of 224 posts for all three topics.


First one of these 2 topics was clean. On second topic was a lot of work, as I had to report 280 posts.


This was another topic difficult to clean, as it had 36 pages. Here I reported 695 posts and the thread was reduced from 36 pages to 1.

All in all, I reported 1415 posts from all these topics!

Now I am at post #28 and I'll continue from this one backwards.

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That makes sense, I totally understand.

Rikafip, did you see this part of my previous message?

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Oh I see, thank you for explaining me, Welsh! But I have a question though, regarding multiple posts in a row: why are OPs allowed to do it though...? According to rule 32,


unless they have reserved posts, not even OPs should be allowed to have multiple posts in a row. Therefore, why are they allowed?


Thank you, Welsh! This post of theymos is what gave me so much determination recently:


I mean I made reports in 2020 and 2021 too, but seeing me that in 2020 I was the 4th most efficient reporter determined me to be eager to be even a better one! Now it's probably impossible to catch up with Ratimov or actmyname, but I'll do my best

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They are all listed here, inside Rikafip's topic... I just pick them one by one


Awww, never give up!


Thank you so much! Indeed, to report ~1000 posts in a day takes me like 8h or so... It's not easy, but I do my best. For example, on Christmas 2021 I had 8000 good reports and now I have 20564! It's doable, with effort...

I wonder how you choose them? I see that most of them are from last year, or started at least few months ago.

Do you have any strategy when you choose which one to take? Maybe newer once or actively used could bring more effects?

In the past I also cleaned many of them myself and lately I came across one of many spammy old threads and thought to report and clean it but it is still like fighting with the windmills, so I leaved it.

I really appreciate what you do because I know how much time it costs, even if you get into practice, it takes a few hours for the work you did. Well done mate.

I would probably merge them together if it was myself handling them. Though, moderators tend to handle it differently when it comes to consecutive posts. Sometimes they're deleted, sometimes they're merged, and then sometimes they're left there, and marked bad. Usually, if its not important news, doesn't have much content, and isn't made by the OP it'll be merged, generally.

Ah well continue how your going, and I'm sure you'll get enough of a theshold to get to that 100 percent. For the most part your reports have been solid.

Yeah, unfortunately even if a moderator was interested in clearing up old unhandled reports, there's no way of doing it. However, I hope you've found a new surge of motivation considering most of your reports are being handled these days! Hopefully that can continue.


Nah, I'm definitely not a special case . Many moderators delete posts that haven't been reported. The statistics available in Meta though only take into account posts that have been reported. I would say that you could probably double the reports every month, and you won't be far off the total amount deleted. Though, that's just a rough estimation, by no means is that backed up by any sort of data.

I'll be going through the backlog just so its easier for me to keep track, and then I'll go through the threads that haven't been mentioned in the OP. I also monitor the sections periodically, and delete what I find just by normal browsing. So, while there's an ongoing process of finding this spam, this thread has significantly increased the amount of the backlog being cleared. Same as reports, though I understand not everyone has time to report individually so a thread or reporting just one post is sometimes the only way, which is fine.

Yeah, announcement threads mentioned in this topic are doing it more subtle, as they are not giving their tokens in exchange for thread bumping, but instead they are paying "marketing agency" to that, and you usually won't find any written evidence of that.

Last time when I provided exactly the kind of proof you are talking about, for some thread wasn't deleted. Back on January 1st I reported this thread, provided the proof that they are offering incentive for thread bumping, but my report remained unhandled. Evidence below should be good enough, right?

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The main reason why i didn't include SatishiClub topics is because I am only focused on threads that are active at the moment of discovery due simple reason: that list would be at least 4x bigger if I included all those old topics that were being bumped and I didn't want to waste my (or mods time) cleaning old and abandoned threads but instead focus on the ongoing ones.