Topic: Proactive fighting with spammers. Doing it the right way - page 4. (Read 7125 times)

Someone has either been closely watching this thread, or has been replying here under a certain agenda. What a surprise. If they don't make drastic changes soon, they should still be removed due to the damage that was already caused.

Guess who just randomly decided to respond to my pm? Bitmixer. What a coincidence! I'm sure someone with about ten accounts on their campaign mailed them in a panic or something.

I do believe that it is mostly a campaign manager's responsibility to look over the post quality of their campaign's participants. 

I was a campaign manager myself for two weeks, in which (I think) I looked over post quality relatively well, I hope.

 ^^^ "Spamming should not be condoned - it should be as simple as that."

Malsetid is farmed. (others unchecked)

November 24, 2015, 09:09:15 AM - November 24, 2015, 10:12:52 AM
Time scale 1 hour. 12 farmed accounts, 2400 spam posts.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/zosuda-663111  Zosuda  (22)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/molsewid-663116                           molsewid  (22)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/bamselk-663122                                                    Bamselk  (21)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/fasdorcas-663129                                                                              fasdorcas  (22)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/zadicar-663136  Zadicar  (860)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/malsetid-663142                           Malsetid  (22)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/bamsed-663146                                                    Bamsed  (67) ***
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/fasdurcas-663156                                                                             Fasdurcas  (23)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/zudalar-663174  Zudalar (22)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/mastsetad-663185                           Mastsetad  (1344)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/blamsud-663190                                                    Blamsud  (21)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/user/farstdury-663195                                                                            Farstdury (23)  

Farmed accounts are only ever going to spam. (or scam) Whatever standard of post they need to achieve to carry on, they will achieve. (lets face it, the bar is unlikely to be set very high) Their posts will still be spam, just longer.

Admins could find these farmed accounts far easier than me, they have the tools available. Still, I can find them easily enough, although the 400 farmed accounts i have found were generally created a year ago. I am a year behind.

If this problem was dealt with, then moderators could be serious about stopping spam.
As you see above, 12 farmed accounts created in 1 hour, 11 months ago. Malsetid, 22 posts when i listed this account, now has 142 posts!
Mastsetad  (1344) now 2129, molsewid  (22) now 240 that is 1100 posts in 4-6 weeks from 3 of 400 accounts on my ignored by mods/admin farmer list.

The list is good. No serious objection from any account listed!

Spamming should not be condoned - it should be as simple as that. If any person could kindly tell me why spammers help the bitcointalk ecosystem (apart from pointless traffic for ad revenue) in any way at all, then I will certainly change my ways and turn into a hardcore one-line spammer myself. After all, I can easily pump out hundreds of useless posts to grind out those cents!

---

I personally do not think that spamming would ever be useful. I also do not condone posting in threads where there are scores of pages (exceptions are there, but in general) since they're just filled to the brim with regurgitated content and vague/general agreements and replies. You might see two users replying to one another, but they know what they're doing (if they aren't alts of each other that is) - they're feeding off each other, helping the other spam hoping to be able to reply to them to get those precious cents in return.

---

On the topic of whether
is a shit post or not, I think it's important to note the fact that the post is literally lengthened only to increase the character count. Do you see how much the user is repeating themselves, and just trying to add on more words? "Same case on others, I think it's not only me. This is just my point of view though." etc. etc.


Here's a couple more posts that I personally find to be spam:





Source: Is it just me or has the quality of this forum dropped immensely - me

---

Do you really think that agreement posts are useful? Sure. It's advertisement for whatever service they're getting money from, but it shouldn't matter what they're advertising - this is a forum, and at the end of it, you need to consider their post quality.

If I spam on random forums with crap and advertise bitcoin.org in my signature, is that acceptable? I hope not.

I think he's talking about me.

I'm just a computer programmer from Illinois (USA) with an interest in the bitcoin protocol. I do what I can to help others learn and understand.

But some services evidently seem to be quite happy with that. Who is that DannyHamilton, by the way?


A good poster can't make more than, say, 15 posts daily on a regular basis, and daily might really be a hefty overstretch. Sometimes you don't feel like posting at all. Shit posters simply don't have such issues altogether, and the service easily gets the required volume of exposure without making fuss over what the members are actually posting and whether what they post does in fact add anything to a discussion. Sheer size may matter after all...

Note that this doesn't say anything about the legitimacy and utility (or lack thereof) of the service itself

Forum does have a lot of good quality posters.Just that campaign managers are too quick recruiting the shitty ones.I'm not saying add only members who are as good as DannyHamilton but at least a two sentenced descent post which actually adds something to the topic and not repeats the same posted in 100 comments above is expected.

Wouldn't they get the actual exposure if the person wearing the signature seems knowledgeable and fluent?

It is not that simple. There were, and most likely still are, huge signature campaigns that recruit hundreds of users while there may be not so many good posters, thus the campaign managers which are chosen to run these campaigns might not have any other option left but to accept almost anyone who knows how to sign up for a campaign and not make a dozen mistakes therewith...

On the other hand, the services may be more interested in the sheer exposure their ads get than in the quality of posts the enrollees make

The campaign managers are paid to run the campaign right? So they should do a better job in choosing who to hire in their campaign. If they cannot do it then they should risk getting their account a negative rating just like an escrower's account.

I got your point after reading this much.Well,in my humble opinion,it all starts and ends with signature campaign managers.They're the ones to pay shit posters.I'm not taking names here but it should come off as an initiative from every campaign manager (Lutpin/SFR10 actively does it) to recruit a few quality posters than an army of spam.Imagine,if every campaign manager only hired above average or say best posters who actively intend to contribute to the forum,there would be no place for shit-posters in the campaign.The spam would reduce drastically.

Again, Off topic. I will stop answering after this until we get back on topic.

I would ban him and everyone else who constantly shit posts. They would get the usual treatment, 7, 14, 30, perma. It is not an abuse of power, it is doing their jobs. A mod's job is to clean up and prevent spam. That means that most of those shit posts would be deleted or trashed, and the users tempbanned as a warning. If they continue to shitpost, then eventually they will be permabanned.

Being trashed is one thing and being banned is quite another. So what is your stance on this? Would you ban (temporary or whatever) users for posting such comments or refrain from doing that? You see, I'm quite explicit about my attitude here and don't beat about the bush. As I said it as well, if mods start banning users (with or without a signature) for shit posting (and that post is an instance of just that), they will end up heavily abusing their power. And would have to ban half of the forum users in the interim at that...

That's why I'm rather skeptic about individual bans just for shit posting (meaningless comments adding nothing to a discussion)

This is getting way off topic.

That whole thread should be trashed. Actually, IMO the entire Gambling Discussion section is just a place for spammers and should be trashed.

As pointed out earlier, I'm not against banning individual users (permanently or temporary). In fact, there are a few cases where the lifetime ban is a must. Usually, I refrain from reporting on anyone unless their posts affect myself personally, for example, if they start copying my own posts. Such acts entail instant permanent ban, and that I can hardly question. On the other hand, would it be proper to ban users who are posting along these lines:


I have already quoted this post before but no one criticizing my stance here wanted to reveal their attitude over this

That doesn't mean that they weren't banned at some point. As I said earlier, most bans are temp bans which serve as warnings for that user to increase their post quality or risk longer bans and eventually permanent bans.

As far as I can tell, Lauda actually received temp bans during their earlier days before being promoted to staff. So yes, the road is open to everyone, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't ban people at all.

This thread has become counterproductive. Almost no useful suggestions have been provided nor have you sucessfully argued against the mentioned methods. Time to start blacklisting services.

Let's not be hypocrites. At the end of the PrimeDice signature campaign we all had been posting crap and then posting about how many posts we made during the month. I made over 1,000 posts, you claimed making even more than that (which might well be the case). In fact, after the PrimeDice signature campaign had ended, I joined Bitmixer's one and was soon kicked out for alleged spamming, lol (to be honest, I left myself having been underpaid after they had retroactively changed the rules). So if this campaign gets banned after all, I will be quite happy personally...

But this is not the way to go


Haven't seen your post before submitting mine, but as you can see, the road is open to everyone, and people do change the ways they behave (and some even become global moderators at that)


I'm against banning services as being counterproductive and overall harmful, especially the ones that are said to contribute to Bitcoin in a meaningful way. I'm not so much against banning individual users as I don't see much sense in it. Just in case, you would have to ban half the forum should it get moderated for real. In this way, punishing lazy campaign managers seems to be the only viable alternative, at least currently. There is no hidden agenda really...

Are you pretty?

First of all, the bans usually aren't permanent, especially the first time. The ban is a warning for the user to post better. Not banning the users and warning them that their post quality is bad is completely counterproductive. Those users who are shit posting and aren't banned are not likely to increase their post quality of joining a sig campaign because the only ones they can join are ones who don't care about post quality (like bitmixer). Do some cost-benefit analysis. The cost of not banning users greatly outweighs any potential benefits. You can't just hope that people are going to change their behavior, that isn't how the world works.

Tl;dr: OP started this thread to suggest fighting spam by punishing campaign managers. Now, they are defending the banning of users/services and disagree with any other methods.

---

What's the secret agenda here?