Can anyone tell me if it's okay if I use this signature? updated it myself, thought I'd bring some new colors to the table.
As mentioned, ref links aren't currently allowed but changing your design is perfectly fine.
If anyone sees this please read this and share your opinion:I'm toying around with the idea of having a set group of people who I've personally deemed are high quality posters to continue to get paid per post count and branching off the campaign to allow anyone to join on and off instantly and use a PD3 referral link which will automatically credit their account (I'd likely boost the referral rate to something like 20%+ for those not being paid per post)
I'm confident doing this would greatly cut down on forum spam, while the very high quality posters who I select would have the option to continue the campaign as it exists privately or swap to a referral based payment.
This isn't at all decided, so feel free to weigh in.
Those who didnt get picked, would be really pissed.
As far as happiness goes, its a bad idea.
As far as money goes, its a good idea.
I think someone before suggested the possibility of keeping only a handful of 'top quality posters' on or paying them at a higher rate (he went more into the detail of why it would be beneficial though). Whilst obviously I'd like to remain on a pay per post basis, I agree with others that this won't go down well with the people who don't fall under that and can only use ref links (though you're never going to keep everyone happy). I also don't think the vast majority of people would just want to merely rely on ref commissions. I think you could have a compromise though. Maybe choose x amount of people to continue to get paid per post and for the rest pay at a fixed price (something like the others such as 0.05/0.1 depending on Membergroup for a minimum of 50 posts etc and also let them use their referral link). I think that would be the fairest. This way you could stick to whatever budget you desired with the fixed amount but also still get a lot of exposure from the 'best' posters without having to worry about spam and breaking the bank on your budget. I think whatever happens you're probably going to need to limit the number of people that can sign up though as the number will just get bigger and bigger every month.
Edit: another thought is that I know I for one DO deduct non-constructive posts. I mean isn't it possible for you just to kick people who try to scam the system? Like if someone posts that they did 100 quality posts and you check and see it's only 90, just kick them and don't let them back in. And eventually you'll see who's honest and they can continue on.
People
are kicked from the campaign who try cheat, spam or scam.
[1]Maybe it's an idea to hire 1 or 2 guys (or use moderators from the current staff) to enforce the rules concerning all the spam. If people spam, kick them from the campaign and don't allow them to rejoin. Sure, they could make a new account but if they spam again, they will be banned again. People will stop spamming (or join another campaign) if they don't get paid due to their spam behaviour. This way you'll keep the high(er) quality posters.
[2]Another option is that certain forum sections, like off-topic for example, will be banned from the campaign. You can easily check the current posts in all sections (profile info ---> show stats). You could combine this with a minimum of 50 characters per post. This might be a bit harder to enforce though.
1) He doesn't really need to hire anyone as users should just report posts/people who are posting rubbish and they'll be very likely dealt with quite swiftly, though maybe having a couple of volunteers like Micro to give posts the once over will also help. I don't mind helping out or volunteering for that.
2) You can easily check people's stats but you can't easily deduct how many posts they did in those certain sections very easily. This seems unrealistic to do and time consuming, and besides, people are allowed to post in off topic and people will still click on sigs there.
I am also all for the idea of kicking people off the campaign and then banning them for an indefinite period. Even if they do create a new account, they need to wait till they reach the Member tier before they can re-join the campaign, i don't think spammers would invest so much time and effort to get back into the campaign. Also second your thoughts that we should ban OT from the campaign simply because the traffic on OT boards will not be enough for PD. If someone is posting say 15 / 50 posts in OT and then trying to claim a reward, then it is not right for PD to be paying these folks. I am sure they can find another signature campaign on here to exploit!
The majority of people who get their first one week ban seem to learn their lesson as they quickly realise it's not worth having your account perma banned over, but how do you know that the traffic coming from the off topic section is not enough? Seems a completely baseless accusation, not to mention, as I stated above, very hard to enforce restricting people from posting there.
So far my experience with signature campaigns are bad. 
