Topic: possible answer to getting rid of all the trash threads here (Read 770 times)

Can you highlight these weaknesses that other members have highlighted ... because I see only they are suggesting there are workarounds that make it a lot harder for ico spammers and people just here to milk a few cents.

As i have said there are workarounds for many things .... the trick is making it not worth their time and effort. Well not for most of them anyway.

Also it pretty hard to prove spam from just people posting pointless parroting statements (that may just be harmless noobs wanting to boost post count - which is perhaps not as bad as pure ico puppet spam)

Let's just give it a whirl 100 or 50 merit to start a thread on the main boards and see how we go.

If this dont work lets just get rid of sigs altogether except for paid members here and make it expensive. I would def give up my sig if everyone else does. Whilst the board is being viewed as just a way to milk a few cents or many bucks for some it will just crush the quality of the posts. The speed the alt board moves makes it worthless when it is 99% junk pumping the latest ico or repeating news that has been posted 20x before in the last day.

 If you are a genuine poster you only post when you really want to know something that can not be found by searching or if you have something you think is of genuine use to others, If there is money to be made by posting you start seeing a huge reduction in quality from account farmers and people (kids) who just want to earn a few bucks per day (nothing wrong with that but keep that to the junior boards so we can find good content on the main boards without sifting through pages of repetitive worthless junk.

I think people saying there are workarounds are correct but that is not a reason to NOT make it harder to ruin the board with spam. There are workarounds to your home security but you don't leave the door open and unlocked with no alarm set do you?

I think we need more mods too perhaps 5 or 6 on the alt main board who are monitoring it 24/7

The bitcoin main board does not seem to be as ruined as the alt main board. I think it must be moderated more strongly.

I mean I'm not usually one to care to much about rigid rules and love freedom of speech this board permits it is excellent... but there are people or groups really abusing it to the point where it is hard to find anything useful to read on there now. Hordes of what I expect are really young kids who should be allowed to post as they wish ...but on a junior board.

I'm trying to figure out if there really are people who will read the first reply to a post and copy the content but just use different words to express exactly the same thing over and over and over again even if they see 50 people have done this before them or if it is some bots running that are just doing this.

Loopholes are in everything but it is effort to reward ratio.. 

It is strange that so many legends/heros are against it.

I accept there could be a very good reason to not introduce it but as yet I have not seen a good reason. I have seen legitimate claims there will be workarounds but that is not a specifically good reason not to try it is it?

It's a shame the theymos can't explain his reasoning for flat out refusing to try it. He's obviously a smart guy so perhaps there are things about how the board functions that I am not factoring in.

I understand things that seem simple are often quite complex the deeper the understanding you have of them are. I am not saying I am smart enough to solve this issue with one obvious idea that I'm sure anyone would naturally assume would be a simple step to reducing the nonsense posting. I'm sure there are a huge amount of factors to consider so perhaps there is another way or perhaps some extra tweaks to this idea that could almost provide a decentralised moderation of this situation by proven senior members without actually giving them full mod powers... perhaps through smerits alone it could be done.

Btw, is there a way to mass report those 2 words long shitty posts? It took me 2 hrs for just reporting around 100 of these posts.

I think merit restriction will reduce spam in the long run, as new spammers accounts are now worthless.
In a few months/years some of those high rank spammers accounts will be reported and banned. It's a slow process, but I think the forum is on the right path now.

Yeah, there aren't enough reporters, only a few people who are like full-on dedicated to this forum report posts. And theymos will never bring in restrictions. He has said that he would ban signatures ultimately if the spam increases, but this is definitely not going to happen in the near future.

Honestly, just let things be the way they are. Spam cannot be reduced by putting merit restrictions. People would just find loopholes.

I would be curious to how many users are reporting weekly, and how many messages are being reported on a weekly basis. An educated guess would be that there just isn't enough users reporting. However, without the in depth statistics that theymos likely has access too it might well not be the case, and there's simply just too much spam currently, and restrictions would be the better option.

All of your simple answers in the first post has weaknesses which already mentioned by other members, and i hope you can conclude that there is no simple answer to this problem. It will never be simple because it involves a lot of people, opinion, thing to consider, etc.


The best way is this, but it is also the hardest way because it is kinda like "the life" of this forum. It attracts people,post,etc, basically traffic. Admin said that is is not an option too though.

The simple thing that can be done is, fight fire with water, hand to hand, If there are numerous spammer, then we need numerous of reporters too. It is like a social work, but i think it will work if a lot of people doing it.

To those who think the frog pond is useless, why aren't you using serious discussion and ivery tower? It's quite a struggle to get reponses there, although it is improving a bit. It would be even better if juniors couldn't start threads in serious discussion.

the main alt board is a total unregulated mess
90% of comments on all threads now are parroting crap with no extra value than what is contained in the first reply (usually that has no value either only to pump a new ICO)

this has turned into an envirnoment with people riddling the board for a few cents from bounty campaigns

if we can't implement this let's ban all sigs on this entire board including legends.

Accounts should not really be sold.

I think 50 merits could be a sensible start

Im not against with the idea, but I can see some problems with this if implemented there will be more merits and accounts selling at higher price.

We all know how hard to manage to get 100 merits you need a lot of time to spend in this forum, how about others that has a job and cant put too much time and effort to get hundred of merits but a legitimate user and not a spammer.

Theymos would probably never agree to this. And nothing prevents turning even good thread to the worst spam collection. Moderators clearly cannot get rid of all spam, one of my promotion messages (guilty!) was deleted yesterday, even though it from December! The administration needs to use AI to catch all those spam!

more discussion to encourage adoption required

I'm not sure exactly what you mean.


1. increase the chaos where? (certainly not on the main boards) what chaos of merit farming? keep opening new topics?  none of this is going to a/ be any easier than just going to the main board and posting? it all sounds a lot of hassle and there are a lot of points of failure for them to achieve any of this. I'm not sure who will award them merit for any of these tactics.

This is like saying it is pointless to put your money in a safe at your home because people will if they want to enough bring explosives or a digger to open it or take it a way with part of your home. Even shutting the front door and vetting who has access is a waste of time just leave the door open and throw your valuables all over the entrance floor.

It is simply a way of making it more difficult to ruin the main board with ico spam and bots. It is rewards vs all the hassle that will be the thing that deters them. Right now they have no hassle just open a new account start filling the main boards with spam and nonsense bot jabber.

2. the mods have no chance of monitoring all threads on here and closing those that are unsuitable there are simply too many threads.

Demerit is for mods alone if they abuse it openly then I am sure a  global mod can be alerted.

Noob jail was only removed because of the volume ... this is noob jail with decentralised moderation by all those with smerit. I think smerit should be for heros and legends only who have something to lose by trying to game the system.

To me I think personally, this won't work. It will increase the chaos already as many people will be farming for more merit just to get to 100+ and keep opening new topics. And also as someone has mentioned the payment for at least copper member being inexpensive, a lot of persons will simply go ahead to make the payments and keep opening new topics. I think the Mods should monitor and close non relevant threads. Demerit will defi be abused should it ever be put in place
That too is not a good option. I think thread locking should be a better approach.

1. There is no punishment you can post on the junior boards
2. It is not a handful of members it is an army of bots and new members who dont follow or attempt to follow the rules.

Of course, the forum should put restrictions for users who are spamming this place. But making a rule in general for all members is not right in my opinion. I mean why punish all members for the spam caused by a handful of a members.

In my opinion, the limit to create certain number of threads in a day should be there. Usually , on small forums the staff is able to notice themselves if some user does this. But there is so much activity here, that is it almost impossible to spot all such users manually. If possible, reports should be sent to the staff once a member crosses that number of posts in certain time frame to check this.

well since we have had no reasonable argument to suggest this is a bad idea then I think we should push ahead with it asap

how to get this implemented asap?

briefly scanning the main alt board and looking at the merit of the thread starters I notice we can cut away 90%+ of the same ico pumping, shilling, bot threads being started

the questions that are not outright spam and shilling are mostly ridiculous for a main alt board and are asked over and over again.

the sooner we have junior and senior boards the better it will be for bct

if we fail to isolate some REAL good reasons not to implement this then it should be put into action as soon as possible to stop the board becoming unusable

Limiting to x posts per day on the main board will not suffice since bots and spammers will just make more accounts and the board will still move as fast as it does now with 99% junk ico speculation. This makes it impossible for good threads to get any foothold and spark up good discussions like before.

Also spam PM need attention i am getting too many of these shits now too. Should be no warnings just ban these spammers offering to pm thousands of members and so many 1000 promotion posts from their bots.

There are both merits and demerits to making restrictions for new users on nay platform.The staff has to make final decision after evaluating everything. Having a limit for new members like x number of posts a day (initially) is however sufficient for a genuine member in my opinion.

This person will find the right board because

altcoin - senior board
altcoin - junior board

bitcoin senior board
bitcoin junior board

it will not be difficult for him to locate the board for him to ask new questions on.

most spam is coming from very low merit very low rank  accounts........ the bots are on zero merit mostly because they either copy and paste other posts or post out of context nonsense.

spammers using accounts that are still able to post on the senior boards will be moderated manually once you get rid of the huge proportion of new accounts posting trash for cash