Topic: List of advertising shills. Mods please review and ban as appropriate. - page 4. (Read 2835 times)

The shitposting continues - I have also now reported the account, suggest others do the same.

I've wondered about this too. I have often reported with a comment along the lines of "Chronic/long term/repeated behavior. Please review post history and trash/delete/ban/nuke" or something similar. The post in question is often trashed, but very rarely does anything happen to the other posts. I wondered if it was due to the report being handled by a non-global mod without the power to delete the posts in other sections or ban the user in question.

If this is the case, does that mean a global mod will never see the report? Is there a system for mods to both handle reports like this but also flag it up for the attention of a global mod? Or is it better to report multiple posts from the user as there is then a higher chance of a global mod seeing one and banning the user?

I've even had to report the same user for plagiarism three or four times in the past, despite every report being marked as good and the post in question trashed, before the user was actually banned. I wonder if this is the same issue - moderators handling the report but being unable to ban the user.

No, I have reported a single post before and included information in the report that has led to multiple other posts being deleted.
I can't see the logic in deleting a single post when the whole (stated) point of the report is about chronic abuse.
Surely if that one post is unacceptable then so are the identical 287?
And a 288 count shit posting account should be nuked on that basis.


You're reading the post history backwards. His last posts were yesterday: the reported one deleted, seven similar ones remain.

This is a practice that applies to all such cases, only posts that are reported are deleted, which leads us to the conclusion that each post should be reported individually, of course if we want all to be deleted. Depending on who is taking the action (not everyone has the same viewpoint), such users are first alerted by a private message, then with temporarily ban.

I see that last posts from fourthfunction is dated to 22 December 2019, which means that he didn't get a strong enough message to stop. This is probably one of those who think: "You can't delete as much as I can post".

Checking Modlog, the individual reported post has been deleted. No other action appears to have been taken.


I shall see if it produces its customary ~10 posts later today.

 

Indeed, I tagged the account a few months back for this exact reason.

The fourthfunction account has posted 288 times in the ~8 weeks it's been in existence.

All 288 posts are links to publish0x articles.

I have reported the account to moderators with this note
I'll check intermittently to see if any action is taken and post here.

Thank you for your insights. From now on, I will keep in mind that creating any new thread involves plenty of further discussions.

Perma-bans shows up in Modlog, and are therefore also scraped by both https://bpip.org/ and http://loyce.club/, so you have ready access to a historical record of banned accounts. Temporary bans don't, though, and it can only be known for sure if one has been issued and how long for if a moderator confirms it.

Just because there are more heinous crimes out there like plagiarism or distributing malware doesn't mean we should ignore these users. General bounty spamming is also fairly low on the priority ladder, but the vast majority of my reports for this reason are acted on within 24 hours. I also wish we could start handing out temporary bans to users who are racking up dozens of trashed posts each week.

I can say without any hesitation that the problems we are talking about here are pretty low on the priority ladder when it comes to breaking forum rules. We can only speculate why this is so, but it is an indisputable fact that if there are no appropriate penalties there will be no appropriate response from the users.

Temporary ban makes some sense if the user to whom it applies has something relevant in posting history except one line posts with links, and it makes no sense in the case of someone who has a clear intention to only post for promotion. After the temp ban, they will return and continue as if nothing had happened.

It is my opinion that such behavior should be placed in the same category as plagiarism, of course, if the intent is determined, which in some cases is quite clear.

I get your point, I don't have a problem with those starting threads with important articles either but it already became a trend out of it to create copy-pasted threads.

Can't recall how many times I've seen "Craig Wright" and "Justin Sun" on the same page as if they mean & provide any value to our community.

I wish there was a history page for those who got temp/perma-banned. At least we'd know if actions are taken against them.

I would encourage you instead to report these posts. I do whenever I see them, and they are usually trashed fairly quickly. Similarly, if a user gets lots of their posts like this deleted, then it builds a case for a ban as well.

Couldn't agree more. I have no problems with people sharing interesting articles or news stories (in fact, in the last topic I created I did exactly that), provided they are not just doing so to attract traffic to a site they own or are being paid by, or to pad their post count or fish for merit without a single original thought or comment of their own. This kind of copying and pasting and including a link a bottom is just legalized plagiarism, and I don't think it should be tolerated.

Although no moderator has chimed in here unfortunately, all 4 of the accounts in my initial post haven't started any new threads in the last few days. I suspect they may all have been temp banned, but it is impossible to tell for sure.

Recently I've noticed that almost like every single new thread, at least on the Bitcoin Discussion board, begins with a copy-pasted article description + a link right under it.

I've started placing most of these users beginning such threads (at least those who've mostly done this in their history) on my ignore list because I don't think it's a good behavior on this forum at all.

It gets really annoying honestly, the Bitcoin Discussion board is pretty much turning into a list of articles with comments being the replies to the threads. I wouldn't have had a single problem with these threads if the OPs had written using their own words a brief explanation of what the article says vs their opinion and then place a little link for the source.

But they're literally just copy-pasting and using the link at the end so it wouldn't count as plagiarism.

I haven't seen someone from the staff/mods mention anything yet about any action taken against these users. In fact, I have created two (1, 2) threads reporting large rings of alts used in promoting either scams or referral links and the accounts are still active 10 days after the first report.

If there's no action to be taken against these accounts, we should at least be noticed because otherwise it's gonna be just us losing our time on things we can't change anyway..

Member: Denial11

Website:
Archive: here

All of his posts are pointing to an article on that website.

Member: market pearl

Website:
Archive: here

This is relatively new account as well, registered December 31 but just shill for his blog from all his post.

Check out this member profile: star7dust
The last topics started by this person: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;threads;u=2713736;sa=showPosts
Archive: http://archive.is/Q8gnZ

Probably doesn't belong in the 'advertising shills' category but each of his topics contains only a link to an article, followed by "What do you think?" or similar one-liner shitpost.

Another one pops-up in the Bitcoin Discussion, user Xangle. Obviously shilling for
Post history:
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I just notice one more account which is relatively new but has the same pattern of posting : user angle_crypto / archived post history


I have already written in a previous post that users have many other options to promote something on this forum, but this clearly does not interest those who want to make their own rules. Maybe it's time for some new rule that would be even clearer with regard to this kind of thing, although most who do this kind of thing don't read the forum rules. Still, it might help the mods to give a quick temp ban in these cases, followed by a perma ban in the case of repetition.

The solution here is to use the forum like a normal user. Sharing the occasional article you wish to discuss, and contributing to the discussion, is totally fine. Throwing out a link to get people to visit your website and then abandoning the thread to spammers is not.

I had hoped that having multiple threads deleted would have been enough to alert you to the fact that you were breaking the rules. Since it obviously wasn't, I started this thread to ask for the moderators to step in with a temporary ban (which is usually 7-14 days) in the first instance. I think that is entirely fair.

That's fine if you don't agree, but plenty of other users do as you can see from this thread, the mods do as you can see from your deleted topics, and other users have been temporarily or even permanently banned for this exact kind of behavior.

It doesn't really matter how exclusive or otherwise the content is. The issue here is the method of delivery.

Its looks like I have found another one: mamamu111.

Old account, registered on 2017. But his first post says it all,

(archive)

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He/she basically shills for this blog:


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