Topic: New guidelines are needed for the Press board (Read 1192 times)

Welcome  

I wanted to report it as well but didn't.  At the same time, there is a discussion between people, I didn't want to kill it either, so I let it go.
I usually stick with
- anything not related to Bitcoin (Alts news, etc)
- anything related to an enterprise, no matter which one. I consider it like a press release, an announcement about a company and its product, not directly about Bitcoin
- anything with an article totally copy-pasted from well-know sources (Forbes & co)
- from time to time seo spams, etc


And while I'm on it, there is something I really hate but I know nothing can be done. When they post their big pictures so useless to the discussion. You never see a sexy lady naked on a sofa

Good point, and thanks to LeGaulois for updating the title.

Most recent update, I have an unhandled report for the last 48 hours on this thread: [2019-11-05] Bitcoin Price Hits $11.6K on Argentinian Crypto Exchange

Usual spam from bitcoinist by the usual bitcoinist spammer (likely employee). The article is barely even about bitcoin - it is about Argentina, with a single paragraph stating that the price of bitcoin is at a premium. Hardly what I would call "notable". The OP has provided no original comments or thoughts. The thread is just Cryptotalk spammers spamming their spam back and forth at each other.

Not a notable source, not really about bitcoin, the single paragraph that is about bitcoin isn't newsworthy and certainly isn't notable, no original thoughts, no good discussion. A complete spam topic and thread, yet the report goes "unhandled".

I really don't even know anymore. It seems like there is no desire to clean this mess up.

I can't tell if the lack of impetus behind this thread is due to only a small number of people being unhappy with the content being posted in the Press board, or if it is simply being overlooked because of the undescriptive topic title.  Does anyone else think new guidelines are needed?

It's a slightly less terrible article than many of others, but it is still simply describing price movements, which anyone can see for themselves at coinmarketcap. Hardly some ground breaking news. It should be trashed in my opinion.

Agreed, but we don't need a consensus here. All we need is theymos or a global mod to state "Here is the line. Cross it and your post will be trashed." If after a month or two we need to relax or tighten the rules, that's fine, but the current status of "anything goes", from price speculation to articles about exchanges (i.e. not about bitcoin), is untenable. There are other boards (Speculation, Exchanges) where these articles which are categorically not "notable press hits" could still be posted.

I don't think that's feasible, since you don't know the quality of discussion that might be generated until after the article is posted, or how long it might take. You would then have to accept pretty much any article and leave the thread open for a few days to see if any good discussion is started. That would clutter the board up and be a nightmare to try to moderate.

I guess it becomes a question of where the line should be drawn.  The most recent topic is now [2019-11-03] Bitcoin YTD Performance Exceeds 140%, Outperforms Most Traditional.  Again from a cryptomedia site, again primarily regarding price, but I suppose at least this time it's more about measurable statistics than unfounded predictions.  Does it qualify as "newsworthy"?  What should the criteria of "newsworthy" be?  Is that price topic more worthy of discussion than McAfee's prognostications?  It feels like a bar needs to be set somewhere, but no one knows where that somewhere is.

Or instead of focusing on what's considered newsworthy, should the focus instead be on what generates the most compelling discussions?  It is, after all, a discussion forum and not a news archival site.  But again, what guidelines could we possibly set out to encourage that?

In many cases it is even easier to write a couple of lines of spam when you post an article, as you can just lift a couple of sentences from the article and reword them. No original thought required.

That is the only thing holding me back from advocating for an outright ban on all crypto-only "news" sites. As I mentioned above, sometimes a trash article about an interesting subject spawns a good discussion, although it must be said more often than not the good discussion stems from the first couple of posters to reply, and less often from the OP, who is usually guilty of all the things we've just discussed.

Exactly this. The most recent thread in the Press Board is this: [2019-10-26] John McAfee Doubles His Bitcoin Price Prediction. The source is "cryptoglobe.com". The article is poor quality, and about a complete non-event: McAfee's price predictions are not newsworthy by any stretch of the imagination. Now, if that had popped up a month ago, I would have reported it without a second thought and would have bet bitcoin on that report being marked "good". Now, I honestly have no idea, since that article and content are not any more complete trash than the ones I've linked to above which have gone "unhandled".

Not exactly.  The point was that reported posts weren't being deleted because a mod reviewed the post and then marked the report 'bad'.  This indicates that there are differing views to what guidelines should be enforced, so some clarity on that is needed.

People certainly suggested that the crypto-media sites should be excluded from the Press board, or that price speculation isn't newsworthy, but I don't know if any of this is official forum policy yet.  And if it is, it needs to be stated in the guidelines.

I don't think it would be fair to write that sub off until we've actually made an attempt to enforce some new guidelines, and we can't do that if no one actually knows what they are.

The difference between posting just an article and posting the article along with a few lines of vague generalizations is very little and if there aren't any semi-insightful points beyond surface-level nonsense, then it is no different from a one to three-liner in any other section.

We should never be looking at posts that host any quotations as the holistic product of the accumulation but rather as a discussion using the quote as a launchpad. That is: the post should be able to create its own foundation separate of the quote as well as build upon it rather than only the latter.

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For example:

If you have a post like this, we should only be concentrating on the last line to gauge for spam/not-spam.

this article talks about the price increasing, what do you think about the analysis regarding the bitcoin price?

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Addendum: question-based replies are some of the most rancid forms of spam because they "kind-of" pass as substantial but you could ask any vague bullshit question about a general premise, like "why price go up". Not sure about the moderation policy.

I also notice that CryptoBry is trying to increase number of its posts by posting in Press, but also in Economic and Altcoin boards on the same principle by posting some news with the addition of his personal opinion. I write my opinion about his posting in his last thread, and so far there are no new entries from him.

That board only needs one moderator who will check it every day and delete anything that does not meet the criteria for that board. Closing that board would not solve the problem of bad news posting, some users are posting the same content in Bitcoin Discussion, Economics, Altcoin Discussion. In other words, the problem would only be moved to other parts of the forum.

Back on topic. Since my original post, I noticed the 'Press' board is cleaner, I believe there were more members reporting the topics. There are still a few examples like CryptoBry's threads, so I would say there is still a change needed. Perhaps to disable the signatures to be displayed would be the best, even if some will think it's too radical


When you're used to reading the board you know which topic to not open.
If they don't know what to spam, the news is the perfect shortcut. You post the title, a paragraph, a link and voila! You can twist a sentence or 2 to look like you are adding your opinion to appear less a spammer. so pathetic.


True but some users don't really want to see the Press mixed with Bitcoin discussion.

I think it would be a shame to see it go, as for the most part the spammers seem to avoid it (even with the ongoing Cryptotalk spam) and, particularly over the last few months, the quality of discussion is generally much higher than you get in Bitcoin Discussion.*

There's an argument to be made to simply ban all crypto-only "news" sites, but I think that would be a step too far. Although the articles they write are poor-quality, and the majority are click-bait nonsense (see the links in my post above) occasionally they touch on an actually newsworthy topic. When those articles are posted, they generate a discussion which is much more interesting and worthwhile than the article itself.

Perhaps something along the lines of to be "notable", the article either has to come from a notable source (i.e. mainstream media - CNN, Fox, BBC, Reuters, etc.) OR has to be about notable events (e.g. the economy of an entire county or the future of bitcoin itself, not "Winklevoss tweets bitcoin good, banks bad").

I don't think my recent unhandled reports mean no one is looking at them, especially considering I've had others dealt with in the same time period. I think more likely is the moderator(s) who is looking at them doesn't think they warrant deletion, which is kind of my point. I've had dozens of threads exactly like these ones deleted over the last two months, and the board is better off for it. I'm wondering what's changed?

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*The quality of discussion in Bitcoin Discussion is a whole 'nother topic.

A new guideline won't change much if there is nobody to enforce it, what the unhandled reports from o_e_l_e_o seem to indicate.

In the current state you could actually just close the whole section without losing any added value to the forum.

But yeah, deleting all of it, and starting fresh with a dedicated mod could work out, I guess.

Is it perhaps time to lock and archive the (now 7 years old) Guidelines for Press board and make a new one specifically stating what the revised 'notability criteria' is?  I don't know if the spammers will actually read it or not, but, to play devil's advocate, it might be asking a little much to request they follow guidelines we can't even be bothered to formally publish in that sub.    

We need to make it abundantly clear which sources and subjects are not welcome if that's the road we're going down.

Bumping this since the Press section has taken a nosedive again recently.

Since this thread a few months ago, I've been reporting lots of threads in press section with good success for various reasons:
- Not being a notable source (i.e. CoinIdol, CoinTelegraph, CoinDesk, any other crypto "news" sites which just constantly churn out terrible quality click bait)
- Not being about bitcoin (Lots of threads about Libra, altcoins, fiat banking, etc.)
- Not being newsworthy (Mostly articles which are purely price speculation)

If you go to the Press Board and sort by time/date of thread creation (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=77.0;sort=first_post;desc), you can see the first page goes back 2 months, and threads generally have around 20 replies. Skip back a few pages and you will see an entire page taken up by a single week worth of topics, most with 0-3 replies. I think it's fair to say the quality of article and discussion in the Press board has gone up with all this extraneous nonsense being filtered out. A couple of the old spammers being employed by the "news" sites I've listed above have also been banned.

However, I am now having several reports against threads going "unhandled" and even a few marked "bad", where I am sure they should have been trashed along with the dozens others I've reported. For example:

[2019-10-17] Luxury Car Manufacturer Begins Accepting Bitcoin - A poor quality article from one of the usual suspect spamming sites, about a single retailer starting to accept bitcoin at a single outlet. How is this in any way a "notable press hit"?
[2019-10-11] Bitcoin Fails at Key Price Hurdle, Risks Return to $8,000 - Another poor quality article from another one of the usual suspects, which simply describes 24 hours of price movements. There is no news in this article; it is purely speculation, and if this is the quality of article which passes as "newsworthy", then we might as well shut the Press board down.

Many of these unhandled reports are against the same user - CryptoBry - who is signature spamming for YoBit. He currently has made 8 out of the last 13 newly created threads, and I have a bunch of good reports against this user (15 in the last month, all from new topics in the Press board), in addition to my now mounting unhandled ones. I've appealed in my report comments for a ban, but none seems forthcoming.

I'm loath to spend my time continuing to reporting these threads to just accumulate unhandled reports. Are we just giving up on the Press section again?

Mostly all the post in press board are been gotten from information shared on telegram forums. They copy and paste it there for information reaching out. Some of the information in press board are informative and enlighten about the happenings in cryptocurrency. I enjoy reading them all

Well as I was saying, I don't think it's going to suddenly make them interested to participate in discussions. They're going to force themselves to write something, and from that moment on if someone feels forced to write something he shouldn't post at all.
(That's why I said they'd just add their shitposts)

This member is another example I was thinking about. When I checked 2 random articles, one was a piece of news 2 years old and the second a copy of an article from Cointelegraph.

There is also ambiguity (or rather confusion) sometimes.

For example, we could read news about coinbase (because of this and that with Bitcoin)
But if Coinbase buys a chips potatoes factory, people think the board is a good place to post

@DooMAD
Smart idea. A bot auto-posting news would be great (if the sources are considered reliable)


Initially, it could be merged with the Bitcoin Discussion board with no problem, but Jesus Christ this board is ill. :/

Yeah, already in 2014. It wouldn't be a great waste to see that section archived, if someone wants to share a piece of interesting news or a news article to spur a discussion, the Bitcoin Discussion board can still be used.

That user could probably be replaced with a few lines of code, heh.  On that note, why not have a bot to scrape news sites and generate the topics, so that people interested in an actual discussion can then talk about them?  All the abuse is taking place in the first post, so that's the part we need to tackle.

As some others he is paid to post for that site, or he is directly connected with that site. In my opinion any topic not related to Bitcoin should be deleted, and this info should be pinned so members finally understand at least that rule.

We have members who abuse that board, there is no doubt with that - look at this one, complete post history in Press board from 2016.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/jgilpulg-914598   user Jgilpulg

Seems like it would be a faff to enforce. Noticed this user today who's posts are 100% in the Press section posting articles to www.visionary-finance.com without any further comment

https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/goozij20-2648997     goozij20

Many of the articles are also just about blockchain and not bitcoin-related.

How about making a discussion after the news article share in the OP mandatory then? I love it when the OP aside from sharing the news also discussed the article on hand, it acts a conversation starter on how the thread will go and it simply mitigates the chances of having a free-for-all/post-what-you-want kind of thread. Aside from that it also makes the news more interesting especially when the OP is also active in the discussion, because sometimes when members post news articles I don't find interesting at first but they do start a discussion it makes me (and maybe other members) want to join the discussion at hand.

Well if it's to stay then it probably should have its own mod, along with stricter guidelines on what should and shouldn't be posted there. As for allocating new mods only theymos can do that so hopefully he'll make some changed based on this thread. Staff were pretty much in unison that something needs to change with it and if I remember correctly most were in agreement that it was no longer really needed.


Altcoin or blockchain articles don't belong there, but that's another issue in that all sorts of alt coin spam and anything vaguely mentioning blockchain also gets posted there.

I tend to agree with stompix and hilarious'.

To be honest 90% of news about crypto is garbage, be it crypto press, which quality is way below sea level, or mainstream media posting non sense clickbait for their usual audience.

A good piece from either source (mainstream or crypto) is extraordinary rare, and shouldn't have a whole board dedicated to it.

I tried to use/read/post in that section at some point, but felt it was no more no less than the altcoins announcement section. Nobody else was reading it.

At some point you just have to cut your losses, and stop the section from going in circles.

@LeGaulois, maybe you could update your topic so that theymos might actually look at it. I wouldn't have if it wasn't because I know you

I used CoinIdol as an example, but I can give others. Like the one telling JP Morgan has created its blockchain & coin. Yes, it's true but it was 2 years ago. Or the one telling Italy started to do x and y, you try to verify but you won't find any other sites reporting this news, you can translate in different languages just in case but you will find nothing! zero!

Initially, it's clear some users have no interest engaging in a discussion, it's just a matter to post "Flash News: Russia did this and that, paragraph, read more here" but there are truly some who are. You can find whole topics of 'normal discussions' (crazy right?). Try to read the same in a Bitcoin discussion topic. I find it hard to force people to add their own thoughts and I doubt it will be better. They will add shitposts, I prefer to read "Flash News: Russia did this and that, paragraph, read more here".

If I post something it's to be able to discuss with others on this subject, it's not to distribute the newspaper. In that case, I prefer to tell them how to use RSS.

Nuke it! Seriously, nuke it! Or at least lock the old topics and the section.

We have hundreds of blogs and wannabe newspapers crypto orientated but we hardly have some worthy news even in one month time. And when there is something important it gets 10 topics in bitcoin discussion, 5 in economics and twenty in speculation.

99% of them are clickbait, poorly written 3 paragraph news that actually tells nothing in detail about the situation.
Every time there is something that makes me curious I have to google the news for other sources and more details, usually, the real event being totally different.

We should be trying to clean that up as well. Obviously a difficult task but out of all the spam boards I've seen, BD is probably the least spam-heavy one.

I would suggest: users should write something that invokes discussion. A summary is not necessary to accomplish the task. Somewhere between a synopsis and a "thoughts?" remark would suffice, I think.

It isn't even that time-consuming, really. But if the opening post takes less time than most subsequent posts (excluding pasting in article and source) then there's a clear problem.

I very much agree with what DooMAD wrote. It would be a pity to have to close that sub-forum, because while definitively there is too much spam, it's a nice collection of news (like an internal news aggregator) and one of the few places where it's possible to discuss them if they're relevant. "Bitcoin Discussion" is too congested with trivial topics.

However, I have no problem to restrict the Press board to "non-Bitcoin" news sources. I also would suggest to sharpen the plagiarism rule for that particular sub-forum and don't allow posts that consist only of a cite of the article and a link to the source. Anyone wanting to post there should at least take the time and write a summary with his own words.

There should also be a "1 topic = 1 thread" rule. If different media outlets cover the same story/news, they should all be grouped in the same thread.

Why not just give someone a shot at moderating it. LeGaulois or o_e_l_e_o or both, 3-month probation. If that doesn't work then kill it.

It's really not the board itself the problem here it's these members promoting these websites are. I remembered that some members here actually admitted that they are getting paid just to share every news from the website in the press board, they don't actually care about the news they only care about sharing all the articles being posted in this board. The end result is the press board becomes a news curator of worthless and unreliable news, some are not even related to Bitcoin just like what you have shared. If this board gets some kind of strict enforcement about what news to share and what news to not share then we might start to see that the Press board is useful on our part.

Then just get rid of the board. The Press section was created when any news article was exciting and notable when it got mentioned by a big site, but now bitcoin is mentioned every day somewhere or another, and then of course there's all the coin-prefixed sites you mention that just regurgitate the same old story or make an entire article over what some celebrity tweeted about bitcoin or because John Mcaffe says bitcoin will be worth x amount and will eat his own dick if it doesn't get there. If it stays then we either need to prohibit those sites or elaborate on what notable actually means.

This was just posted in Press:

How to sell EBooks for Bitcoins


That board really isn't for this sort of stuff.

The problem is what websites/news sources do you count as a reliable source? Because every time I visit the board I'll just only see news articles from coinidol, coindesk, and cointelegraph and more often than not they always have a similar offering in terms of the quality of news they are offering. They always try to create news from tweets, current events and relate it to price movements in the market, criminal activities, and of course bans and regulations happening in the world. The worst part is they themselves are sourcing their news from one another and recycle it only a few tries to create their own news articles. If we will rule all this crypto specialized news websites we are only left with thomson-reuters and bloomberg as a reliable source for getting news articles the downside is they aren't even focusing on cryptocurrencies right now.

Yes and yes.

If you look at the Bitcoin press hits, notable sources thread, which was the precursor to the Press board, jgarzik uses the following phrase (emphasis mine):


I'd say sites like CoinIdol and CoinTelegraph pretty clearly fall under the category of "bitcoin community self-promotion". Sites which are entirely dedicated to churning out (poor quality) content about bitcoin or other cryptocurrency are not a "notable" place for an article about bitcoin to show up on.

I actually wouldn't have an issue with articles from CoinIdol or similar showing up, provided they were of high quality, showing up infrequently, posted by genuine users, and sparking genuine discussion or debate. However, as it stands, one spammer who is presumably being paid by them just floods the board with every non-news, factually inaccurate, piece of word salad they churn out.

Perhaps a solution would be to have search engines not index threads in the press board. A warning message could also be displayed to those not logged in and those with little activity/login time that links posted and often very spammy/low quality.

I post about Press board some time ago in this thread, and two accounts who make most of spam are banned (both reported by me for plagiarism), and one account is not interesting to post there anymore (ex. stake sig spammer). But as one of banned member say, nothing will not stop them to make new accounts and post again.

In past some of my threads are deleted in Press, and this is because this board should be only for Bitcoin related news, not altcoins or how MasteCard is making some crypto-wallet.

I think that it would be very hard to find balance in what is notable source, but to say no to coindesk, coindol and cointelegraph would for sure solve problem since 90% of articles come from these three sources. But I agree with DooMAD we should not go in that direction, censorship is the worst solution.

The listed mod for that board hasn't been online since March, so maybe something needs sorting there first and foremost.

If the general Bitcoin Discussion board weren't such a cesspit, I'd be okay with closing the Press board and merging the two.  But as it stands, it's nice to have all the recent and unfolding events in one place and not buried underneath "who is satoshi x10^8247819124 ", "reason for bull/bear market x10^2418134 " and whatever other stuff too mundane to care about gets posted there.  Despite the initial posts in Press generally being a free pass to copy/pasta, the replies are generally of a higher quality than those in Bitcoin Discussion and the conversations are usually well-informed.  So for that reason alone, I'd be sad to see it go.

At the very least, I think a rule should be introduced (and enforced) that you have to include your own thoughts and opinions on the subject to accompany the article itself.  And not just a basic one-liner asking what other people think, either.  

I'm on the fence with blocking crypto-related sites.  I'd say treat it on a case-by-case basis.  They're not all as dismal as CoinIdol.    

That seems a bit extreme. The Press guidelines already states notable press hits. Some clickbait article from shitcoinnews.net really shouldn't count as 'notable'.


Well whether someone clicks on them or not is besides the point really. I'm sure some do, but it's free to post here so any free advertising is better than nothing and they probably post here hoping that someone will click on them at least. I think most people probably don't click on signatures either, but it's still brand exposure, along with the backlink spam as you say.

Hehe, I lol'd at the title, pretty funny stuff :')

I don't know though, it seems like that could very well be a very slippery slope.
Once you start moderating which websites can and can't be used, you might end up with something that resembles censorship.

That said, you do have a point and I would not oppose moderators tackling this on a case-by-case basis.
The painfully obvious spamming attempts should be removed for sure, but where do you draw the line?

Most news websites basically re-write stories from other websites, some are just better at it than others.


Indeed, they're just creating back-links. I doubt they even expect people to click on those links. Although, maybe they do, if they're posting hundreds of links each day.

EDIT:

Okay, just looked at some of those CoinIdol articles and while I do agree that they're pure crap, I doubt it's actually done maliciously.
I get the feeling that the person who's writing these articles isn't a native English speaker, but does kinda try to put in some effort.

Case/point: https://coinidol.com/profitable-mine-bitcoin/

Really looks like a very amateurish approach to starting a news website, but I would not classify it as purely spam.

The posters that are spamming their articles as described by op probably care neither about signatures or post count, they just want to drive traffic to their sites by spamming links to them. The only people that care about their sigs and post counts in there will be signature campaigners, but this is a secondary issue of the type of spam op is describing.

Perhaps the press board could be configured so that it does not count for activity, and that signatures are not displayed in the board. Or at the very minimum, make this true for OPs of each thread.

I believe the above should remove most if not all of the incentive to do what is being described in the OP.

It's only really there because it's pretty much the only board where you're legally allowed to get away with it. It's a board where essentially plagiarism is allowed as long as it follows the Press format and that's why people have taken advantage of it. Remove it and I doubt people will just start posting it elsewhere. If they do, they should probably be warned and then temp banned, especially if all or most of their posts are just press or promo articles. At the  very minimum some restrictions should be put in place and I think enforcing the notable Press hits clause should be applied ie no crypto-related sources.

This would be my preferred solution (at least as a trial in the first instance), although I can also see the argument for just locking it completely. It served a purpose when bitcoin was this niche and relatively unknown development, and any mention of it in the media was a big deal. Now that bitcoin is regularly written about on most major news sites, regularly discussed on TV by most major news networks, even tweeted about by the president; "notable" press hits isn't really a meaningful concept in this context.

This "legalized plagiarism" as you put it is the lowest of the low - the absolute minimum amount of work needed to make a post which will be paid by a bounty and won't be deleted. My concern would be that if the Press board is more strictly moderated or locked, then these spammers would simply move to another board.

Multiple suggestions have been proposed in the past including just locking/archiving it completely or only allowing posts from non-crypto related sites to stop all the advertising spam. Doing the latter would stop most of the crap but I think that board has served its purpose and is no longer needed now. Any relevant or important article can just be posted and discussed in the main Bitcoin board but at the moment the majority of people who create threads in there are either promoting a site or are getting away with legalised plagiarism which they can get paid for on most campaigns.

The Press section is a mess. 90% or more of the articles are barely even newsworthy, and certainly not from "notable" sources. CoinIdol, CoinTelegraph and CoinDesk are the worst offenders - several articles a day from each of these sites are posted by the same small handful of accounts on a daily basis. One of the accounts was recently banned, and in the appeal thread openly admitted to being employed by CoinTelegraph to spam the Press board with their content.

These sites are not "notable" by any means, but in addition to that, their content is usually trash. Articles about bitcoin being more popular on Google trends than stocks, or about bitcoin being centralized. Not newsworthy, and in some cases, not even true.

At the begining, I wanted to suggest to add a rule for the 'Press' board. Whatever the news is about no problem but it should come from reliable sources.

I often see websites posting fresh articles that are just old news spun to make it fresh, or articles with ridiculous points. CoinIdol is the perfect example currently, sometimes they're just freak, they publish bizarre stories and the sources are not verifiable anywhere.

So then I thought I'd read the rules of the Press board again, (it doesn't hurt from time to time to reread it ) and I found it was a common practice a very long time ago.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.24599



I know a problem could be people arguing what a notable source is, or why 123.com is not 'notable' etc but there is surely a way to balance.