Topic: Policy on users like this guy? - page 2. (Read 1100 times)

Great investigative work. It serves to remove any doubt as to this user's motivations - he is a paid shill. As we've seen many times before, if and when beincrypto stop paying him, he will simply hire his services out to someone else. He has no interest in stimulating or taking part in a discussion, and simply does the bare minimum to mean his posts aren't instantly trashed so he can get paid. He breaks rule 1 about low value posts, and he breaks rule 24 about insubstantial advertising.

We wouldn't tolerate this kind of behavior from someone being paid to shill an altcoin, an exchange, etc. Why do we tolerate it for a news site?

Well, well, well. Cheezcarls.

Just had a bit of free time and done a very quick research about this guy.

After taking a look onto his profile (archived), his Skype username is "bogartkick". Coincidentally (/s), there was an user a few years ago on another forum (cannot archive for some reason, if someone else can do it please archive the page) with the following signature:

"I'm doing manual outreach and guest posting to blogs with real search engine traffic. Click HERE if you need more info regarding my service. POSITIVE reviews included."

On the same profile, the location is set as "Your link for $15 a year". Moreover, his Twitter is "Jeff_Caceres". A quick search on Google results in this (archived) profile of someone named Jeff Caceres. He's related to cryptocurrencies, specifically a PR Marketing man for MetaMorph's ICO.

Here's an article (archived) written on yet another website by Jeff Caceres, where he talks about the way you can use forums as a free traffic for your links.

Now let's do even more research. Bogartkick, right? Here we have a link from 2016 on Bitcointalk, where another member talks about this guy, accusing him of scamming. Here is a post from 1st of December 2019 on one of the links I shared above, where he was posting traffic offers to other members. A quote from his offer: "Since I don't have my own music or entertainment blogs, I have the ability to outreach them, negotiate and would let them publish your own content with links.".


A quick look at his latest posts reveals what he's here for. He has published 13 THREADS within 3 days on this forum, ALL having the same structure. This is clearly spam, and he's doing it to earn money. It's the equal of sh*tposting/burstposting to benefit from a signature campaign, or maybe even worse.

Are the admins going to do anything about it? I mean.. I don't think we want monetized links to become the next BitcoinTalk trend after all the counter-measures the staff has done so far with the merit system and all, do we?

@Lucius Exactly!, @hilariousandco agrees with us... I dunno if the guy has been warned yet or not cuz He hasn't changed his posting behaviour... Not even once he has bothered to engage in his threads, the guy is just gaming the system as you said...

Try to report his posts and see what will happen. I can tell you that all my reports for this user stay unhandled (for reports in Bitcoin Discussion), so his post is not considered spam, or violation of forum rules by advertising in the post area.

In addition to being irritating, the articles he posts are mostly on the trail of some false sensationalism (read clickbait), with the addition of his personal comment, which is if we're going to be honest, just a way to avoid ban or threads deletion.

He is now the highlight here so most probably he will be banned if he continues his posting style. I think if there is any special news then we can post few posts like he did, but if his only purpose is to create many new threads and forget about it, its looks like an opening for a spam.

Looks like his ban period has expired, The dude is back and is on his spamming spree... Will he be getting warned for this or banned? Cuz all he does is, post in bounty threads and create these threads...

Unfortunately, he very often makes use of rather vague forum rules that state that posting is not allowed in posting area, "unless the post is in a thread you started and is really substantial and useful." (Forum rule 24). Personally, I have expressed my opinion about him and others like him, and I believe that this is a classic advertising that should be sanctioned.


If you look Hydrogen post history and compare it with cheezcarls posting history difference between the two users is clearly visible, not just in the fact that Hydrogen is posting news from different sources, but to participate in the discussion.


If it's true he's banned for some bounty, I have no doubt that after the temporary ban expires he will just continue to promoting his employer, yet he is paid to do just that, same as others which have been mentioned several times in this board.

This pretty much sums up my feelings on users like this. Firstly, the posts are low value, and could be deleted from that point of view. Secondly, they are insubstantial advertising, and could be deleted for that too. Thirdly, it is spamming. I frequently report posts like this, saying something similar to what I've just said in the comment box, and they are usually trashed. My only gripe is that these users just continue this behavior indefinitely and we never seem to ban them. After a user has had 20+ threads like this deleted, and still hasn't fixed their behavior and is continuing to spam, then we should be handing out escalating temporary bans.

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His threads don't belong in the Press section either. It is supposed to be for "notable press hits". A site which is exclusively for crypto news is not a "notable" source, and most of his threads are barely even newsworthy at all. His threads belong in the trash.

It seems he was banned for participating in the Tael bounty. Users who spam like this should be warned first to knock it off then banned if they continue.

Another Global Moderator agrees with you because I see on the cheezcarls' profile that he's banned, but nothing in the modlog, so it's just a temporary ban.
I hope he gets the message.

I have in the past shared articles from different sources but I have engaged in my threads with users... So does @Hydrogen. You will always find @Hydrogen to engage in his threads afterwards but with cheezcarls that is not the case as I mentioned above. This dude just sees a random clickbait article > Copy paste > Write a few sentences and forgets about the thread's existence. I haven't found him engaging in his threads after they have been created... His behaviour is in question here... I have nothing against sharing external links in general.

same feelings here. linking bitcoin-related press and providing commentary to jump start a discussion is not bad behavior. i don't mind the practice itself, particularly if the OP has something interesting to add.

the fact that all his articles are from beincrypto.com though, is transparent enough to be annoying. especially since a lot of them are just clickbait trash. i've got mixed feelings about this.

I have seen some other users in the forum that copies a paragraph from an article and say " read the full article at...". Most of these posts deserve to be deleted. Because even if they don't break rule number 24, they break rule number 1 which says " No zero or low value, pointless or uninteresting posts or threads."
These users have at least one of following purposes.
1. increasing the post count without being accused of plagiarism.
2. advertising a website and getting paid from them.

A few days ago I reported some of posts made by diorthotis after Coolcryptovator posted about him. The user was advertising an exchange in every post. All of the reported posts were deleted. (Visit the link below.)
Re: Advertising exchange link on the post area.

There is a big difference between that user and the user mentioned in the OP. The difference is in quality of posts. cheezcarls adds his own comment about the news or article. Posts made by this user aren't really that annoying. But I think they are still against the rules.

Rule number 24 says:
24. Advertisements (including signatures within the post area) in posts aren't allowed unless the post is in a thread you started and is really substantial and useful.

According to this rule, if a post is quality enough, there is no problem.
In my opinion, that's true only when a post is checked individually. When all posts made by a user contain a certain link, that's against the rules.

theymos:

To being ambassador or promoting website in this forum is okay. I think it's allowed for him to promote it, but don't do it at all times for the post. The forum related cryptocurrency is so many, not only bitcointalk. Also social media can be alternative choices. This users is violating the forum rules. He do many times to link spam of his post. I think he should get temporary banned.

Imagine if someone did the same thing like this? We would not have any creativity and inovation for making post to help each other. Just put the link for our post --> waiting --> easy money.

The forum intention is to discuss share information for everyone, besides i think there is no problem in his/her post, if what he is posting is related to the forums being discuss, i see him/her sharing a lot of information, and its all related i don't see any problem with the , besides he's contributing and sharing what him/her have find out, is it not great?

Personally, I feel like if the user has real intent of discussing a topic which they are sharing, those should be allowed, I don't have any sort of problem with it... but if it's merely being done for padding signature posts and indirect advertisement, I feel like those should be nuked... As for @Hydrogen... @Hydrogen doesn't share his links from a single source, Plus he engages in his threads unlike cheezcarls in question... Would like to hear what mods think as well...

That could be the case, though I never found cheezcarls's threads to be spam.  Hydrogen does much the same thing in the Economics section--he'll post some text from an article and then comment on it.  Since I don't visit crypto news sites, I find this sort of thing to be useful.  Just my opinion, though.  

I did have a problem when cheezcarls was posting those huge images, but thankfully he's since stopped doing that.  Don't know if there's a specific rule that covers what he's doing, but I don't think there is as long as he's not including reference links or obvious advertising spam.  Maybe a moderator could weigh in.  

Heh heh, well that one got blown all out of proportion in general and not just in the thread that cheezcarls created, to be fair.

Lol! You can't be serious! How is one guy's tweet about his sex life relevant to bitcoin's discussion...

So his MO is to post an excerpt, followed by the link and then some comment.

If the mods aren't doing anything, I guess he managed to skirt the rules.

Personally, I think he is not really wrong or violates the forum rules. If it makes us uncomfortable, we can ignore this user. If he gets paid to advertise something, he's doing a good job for them, or at least his article has relevant content there. So I think we just need to ignore this user, there shouldn't be any accusations, because it's not worrying, even the mod doesn't delete his post.