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

This is a forum where every newbie is really expected to post something that is new for them. It might be a trash post from all of us who already have lots of information about crypto but for newbies who have less knowledge about them it is a genuine question. There are some newbie accounts that are merely for leveling up there rank to join signature campaigns and some bounties. Even the merit system wasn't able to solve the shitty and spammy posts but it lessens the potential of making bounty and signature armies to make a living. The best thing to clean this forum from spammers is to remove altcoin section where newbies are spamming their shitty coins just to get a piece of money. The forum should be all about bitcoin only, since it's bitcointalk.org. The removal of bounties and signature campaigns from ICOs will help clean this forum from spammers and shitty posts from newbies ranking their way up.

Have you not seen the newbies which come here ask a question thats already been asked before a dozen times and then disappear? Reddit is probably a better option for them because its already a cesspool driven by a popularity voting system.

Bitcointalk is for discussion relating to the crypto space. Sure questions can be asked and answered but if they are going to ask questions relating to Electrum theres several different other platforms which are more suited like stack exchange. These questions are not unique.

I will tell you something I just thought that will show how this idea would be bad for the forum and to the newbies.

Imagine someone who has a legit question, someone who doesn't even know this bounty/spammers world exists.

He writes on Google something like "how to recover a wallet from Electrum"

He sees two main websites, bitcointalk and reddit. He immediately open two tabs, one for each.

This guy comes here, creates an account, and try to find the right board for his question. He clicks new topic and he sees a message saying he can't post there. He can only post in the newbies session.

This guy will immediately close bitcointalk tab and post on reddit. He will be answered in reddit immediately and will never come to bitcointalk again.


Later on, because reddit is filled with altcoins shilling, he "discovers" bitcoin is a shitcoin with old technology and sells all his btc and buys bch, nano, iota etc...

And spammers will continue spamming here because they already have old accounts and nobody reports them.

Well let's be honest reading the replies from most it seems they are not getting what the idea exactly is. It seems they think they  are getting all  posting rights revoked.

I think a vote from senior members and above might be quite a useful poll.

Please validate why stopping people or bots having immediate posting rights on the main board without first demonstrating they are willing to be useful willing participants in the spirit of the board is a bad thing...

Even though they will have immediate posting rights on a junior board where if they do prove to everyone with smerits to give that they are useful or even just willing to abide by the board rules ...then they will in a decentralised way be approved for starting topics on the main boards.

There has been no better alternative offered and leaving it as it is now is just turning the board into 90% garbage actually more likely 95%

They removed noob jail because it was not possible with the volume.... this is simply a noob jail that is able to cope with huge volume due to more or less decentralising the mod process.

Like we said they dont need to give anonymint level posts or answers just show they are genuinely interested and helpful.  

You're sort of asking the newbie jail to be bought back. Stopping people to post in the main boards is not a good idea. Although you can still merit users in any board you want to. That is much better because more the boards, more the posts to merit.

I believe no one has so far liked this idea, it would be better for a better suggestion, a user friendly one, or you could just merit users, report a few and have good discussions, eh?

Please re-read what the proposal is.

I have no idea why you are saying this.

You will be able to post and ask just like now but on the junior boards right from the outset. You will also hopefully receive an abundance of help from people hoping to be of use and in return receive merit. Rather than your thread instantly going to page 20 under my ico is best for x reason and copy and pasted news threads, nonsensical bot threads etc.

You are 100% correct that rank is not really a measurement of whether you are a great poster or not although I would suspect the number of hero and legends that are bots or pure sig/ico spammers is rather low in comparison to the proportion of new accounts. Most legends that have built their account from noob jail in the start would have a genuine interest in crypto.

Again there is no logical reason to not go ahead with it. It will for certain improve posting quality and reduce most of the trash from the main boards. What remains will then be suitable for manual moderation.  I don't think we should say because the solution is not perfect that it is not worth implementing. Certain behaviors are not easy to auto moderate so identifying those and manually moderating is the only option but you need to get to a volume level that is manageable first.

I think you are taking away each and every peoples privelage to learn and ask things about bitcoin here in the forum. Your suggestion will surely defeat the main purpose of the forum.

Sometimes the search button is not enough to answer my question because it is slightly different from the previous topic.

I remember the rules and regulation that the rank is not a measurement whether you are a good poster or a bad poster.

I guess what you meant is topic, not thread, isn't it?

This is the way shit projects operate its campaigns to pump their ANN topics with help from shit-posters, spammers.

I think the best way and most effective way that Theymos can do (it might be the final solution for BTT forum to clean up shitty members) is "Prohibiting Junior members and below to join any bounty, campaign in the forum".
Only Member rank and higher ones can wear signature codes and join campaigns.

After the shitposting attitude that people put up the only way the mods can control it is to trash their posts. We get so many redundant threads everywhere where members are posting nonsense in order to get paid.

That was (and still is) the actual idea behind a forum discussion

Shitposting is not a problem its a cancer to this forum metastasized by the scumbags in the forum who love to get paid for writing rubbish.

I agree with your point because what the OP says - will actually incite more merit trading.

Why could you not post on the junior board?
What reduction in functionality would you experience based on this specific personal example?

The forum main purpose is not fighting spammers.
This is a place where newbies are welcome and they can find a community to help them, answer their questions and help them to discover bitcoin.

I started posting here when I needed  to clear a doubt about btc . I needed to create a topic for that. then I discovered how nice his place was and became a member.

Shitposting is a problem, but the forum is still working. Your solution would take out an important functionality from the forum.

Let's discuss ...

it is to be a decentralised decision of what makes a good or bad poster
my method would leave it to all those that already have sufficient merit to decide upon what is good and what is bad.
the board would naturally through a decentralised process decide who and how quickly should be able to start threads on the main board.

bad would not qualify or at least be very delayed at reaching the main board.

it is not only a matter of good and bad it is also a matter of real poster vs bot

also this is only thread starting on the main board ... although posting at all even in thread could have a 25 merit threshold.


I don't get your point about anonymint ? he was an exception to the rule and was banned due to some disagreement with the mods although obviously a high merit worthy member (imho). I don't think he would have any issue starting a new account and accumulating his merit threshold in a very short amount of time if this ever became an obstacle for him.

I'm not sure how we can argue leaving things as they are now is a better option.

Fella, your logic is based on two false assumptions:
1. 100+ merit -> good poster
2. 100- merit -> bad poster

The first assumption is false. I already showed you the reason, that's because of merit airdrop.
The second assumption is false. That's because of Nullius-like or Anunymint-like members.

I do not follow this logic... that is not to say I am correct and that you are wrong. I am always happy to discuss and learn and change my opinion.

They can still ask these questions on the junior boards. Those even attempting to join in and contribute to legitimate and worthy discussions can be given merit. I would find going there browsing through a selection of good threads, then meriting those making real effort to help or even joining in conversations of worth and interest far more rewarding than reporting 100 spammers, ico bots, post pasting bots and then the mods have to confirm and delete and take action. This is a wasteful and unpleasant process and it is also a very centralised bottlenecked process at the mod level if doing it this way. It is also a very negative thing to report person compared to giving praise and merit.

You are not to expect highly detailed knowledge of conceptual design and coding from anyone on this board including legends of course only a willing and helpful attitude to contribute and converse with others.

I am not really complaining at the obvious tech brain drain and dilution since the days of hardcore bitcoiners - that was always going to happen. Let's be honest what percentage of the board actually would have the capacity to understand many of these designs at a deep math level. I don't think it's essential most need to understand at more than a very basic level. However the board is now nothing to do with the tech or about the aim of creating decentralised trustless networks... it is simply becoming a marketing board for icos through various posting techniques that make the board almost worthless to anyone other that to hammer the search function for specific details you may want to look up from years ago.

Having a sensible vetting period that is semi automated is the obvious choice. This will be a decentralised vetting process since those with the most merit to give will be free to peruse the junior boards and all be mods in a way.

Ranks don't matter anymore in bitcointalk, other than for signature campaigns. A few users don't merit legendary ranks as they think that is a waste of their sMerits, they would rather spend that on lower ranked members. Also just because one user is "legendary" doesn't make him a good poster.

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How could you possibly not see it? This is a terrible idea. Some users come out here to ask legitimate things and not all of them are good posters at start. People have to stop expecting nullius-like post quality from newbies. And I am a fucking hypocrite. This option SHOULD NOT be implemented. I am sure there are other ways to stop people from spamming shit. Why don't you start off with reporting 100s of posts per day?

Let's be serious now 17 since the merit was introduced what about the previous years. Also I don't think it is worth giving merit to a legend since he is already at the top level. I'm sure many others see it the same way.

The idea has merit and you can still post on the junior boards.

Perhaps we can bring it down to 50 merit.

I see things getting worse so I don't see we have any option but to introduce something like this.

I see no actual valid reason to not introduce it.

There has been no good rebuttal so far.

People claiming there can be workarounds is fine but they require more hassle, time and money in most cases this will cause a reduction in the things we all want to see reduced.

Imagine if reporting to a mod is the only way forward. It is just not feasible to have such a manual system for such volume.

The noob jail was removed because it was manual and of course too much work. Still it was something we all had to go through.

The 50 merit is not as bad as a noob jail because you will have many good posters in there still building their 50 merit and the quality will be far higher on the entire board because bot spammers and puppet accounts will have less and less reason to exist.

Really? And you actually just got what? 17 merits despite being a "legendary?"
Don't get me wrong, I just wanna say my point related to the merit airdrop.

This would hurt a lot of legitimate users here. This has been discussed to hell and back in the past and it has been turned down every single time. theymos values freedom of speech way too much.

A year ago the board was less spammy but it wasn't as worthwhile as you think it was. Go and read the topics back in 2012-13 or even 2014 , you'll know.

This has been going on for years. Ever visited the Off-topic board? Things are much worse there.

The real members left in 2014 itself. Mods can't do anything if people don't report stuff. And very few people use the "Report to Moderator" button. Because every time they do, they ask themselves, what is in for them,they realize it is nothing and don't even bother to use that button anymore(this is for most people who DO NOT care about this forum).

About the altcoin board, do you seriously expect one moderator to handle the worse board on bitcointalk? Come on, man. People literally have given up reporting anything on that board. It is that bad.

Did you consider to start doing something yourself and help with moderation by eg reporting the threads/posts you see as problematic to moderators?

The board is a mess. The average thread content a year ago was worthwhile.

Now both the main boards are beyond any reasonable moderation. There is too much low quality volume. It is a mass of which ico is best and copy and paste bots reposting threads over and over.

The real members that did post quality content are leaving.

The board needs to be slowed down and 90% of the trash cut away.

You can't even start to moderate this much volume with most new members not even bothering to pretend to keep to the boards guidelines.

100 merit or cant start a thread on the main boards.
mods will stand of chance of moderating to some degree after that

sure some will find workarounds but mods need to get on top of what can not be automated.

Junior boards or noob jails are essential - the merit system is good but does nothing to prevent people spamming their project and building a ton of bots and puppet accounts to spam with them. I see entire threads pages long all pump the same shit and not 1 account has any merit in pages and pages of accounts.

It used to be great to drop in here and read some really interesting and great discussions by the more knowledgeable members and get to ask them some questions..but now just pages and pages of nothing but ico pumpers and spammers and noobs asking the same questions over and over again.

Honestly I don't think the main alt board is really even moderated now, and I don't blame them, it moves to fast and nobody there even tried to adhere to the rules.

Having restrictions for starting threads (basis ranks) has been suggested for a long time. The general consensus is that might be too restrictive. The problems is not just with low value threads, it is with the multiple accounts spamming in them. It might take some, but the merit system will definitely have an impact.

Charging a fee especially with Bitcoin and it's fees would be just in practicable and wouldn't really stop people from purchasing copper membership just to bypass it as copper membership isn't that expensive. Having copper members only being able to create threads is a better idea than allowing everyone to though. 

What is better to do is to charge a fee for posting, only allowing copper members to open a topic in certain sections and increasing the amount of copper membership purchase.

Some already use managers for their threads. Limiting thread creation would only hinder certain people, and then they would just hire people like the rest of competition. There's no simple answer to anything regarding moderation.

Moderators or even merit sources should not be given demerit points, and I'm hoping that this isn't implemented in the future. It will only be abused, and misused.

Seems similar to the idea that simply won't let newbies and juniors to open a topic, only in selected threads (kind of newbie jail for topic opening)
Allowing only 100+ merited members to open topics would make the price of these accounts higher.
Also, imagine that there's a really good ICO that wants to advertise on the forum, but without an account with 100+ merits they have no chance to open their thread... (I know there are really a few of these kind of ICOs that are not scam/spam, etc...)

It won't work:

• They will ask someone else to create it for them.
• They will buy accounts with at least 100 merits.

That's not enough (they need users that report such cases [so they can handle it and possibly ban them as well]).

100 merit+ to start a thread on the main alt or btc board

junior boards opened for btc and alt sections for all the...

which ico is best threads, my ico is best threads, i will copy and paste other threads to boost my post count threads, etc

the boards simply moves too fast with many many duplicate threads and most are just pump my ico threads anyway by armies of sockpuppet accounts with zero merit

mods need demerit powers really for obvious spammers who have purchased high level accounts but never post anything of worth and just use them to spam for different icos