I don't know how others feel, but these little "bidding wars" that some people are pushing for just cheapens the campaigns and as far as I'm concerned, just red flags us as a whole, and I see the sigs on this board getting eliminated altogether if these red flags keep popping up.
If this ever comes to happen (and Stunna with other benefactors fail to bribe the authorities here), this may mark the end of the forum. It will be a matter of a few days (if not hours) for a new, more signature loyal forum to pop up with the user base instantly migrating there...
That's what people said about alt coin giveaways but this forum is still here and going strong. I'm sure lots will move over to a new forum but none of them have the userbase this one does, though that's not to say a bigger one could arise and banning sig campaigns certainly would help in that regard.
A more loyal sig campaign forum may show up, but how many users will migrate? Likely only the sig advertisers and a few other members. User base or not, forums survive on longevity. Then again, myspace was crushed.
Users with paid-for signatures may not be the majority here, but evidently they are the most active ones on this forum (that's what ultimately matters), and with the financial and technical support from the sig advertisers, a new forum may quickly gather popularity...
A new forum of who? Mostly sig advertisers. I'm sure it will gain other users, mostly ones that are there to make money or dupe accounts. It may start out ok at first, but eventually, it will turn into a big circle jerk. So to speak.
A forum cant be run by sig advertisers. A forum gets established because of its content quality, which sig advertisers or forum advertisers encash on. If u look closely, u'll see most of the sig advertisers are also forum advertiser.
I'm long time into online marketing et al and from that experience, I can tell u that online money follows good content. So, as long as, we are helping newbies, doing constructive criticism to services and in general adding value to the forum, the forum will exist with its own advertisement as well as the sig adverts.
If u look at the forum's alexa rank, u'll know how positively the active members are contributing to it and thereby raising the forum's value itself to the advertisers leading to better cost of ad space on the forum. But, if the members start randomly spamming the board, that has to be controlled, else bitcoinTalk will turn into a 4chan which will eventually discourage the advertisers.