Topic: Proposal: Disallow Ads in Signatures - page 15. (Read 19034 times)

I wonder if mods would even have to enforce the rule. Can the footer

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line be changed to something like "This is my stuff, ask me about it!" Then if people put non-personal stuff in it, they'd get annoyed having to answer questions about third-party services, and remove the links. Basically everyone would annoy everyone else into compliance.

I think we can all agree it's a problem, we just need a good solution that isn't a waste of time. Banning paid sigs is easy to say but how? They'll just do the offer on their own website instead. Sigs only to one's own site? Great, good luck finding someone to waste hours of their time enforcing that though.

Only clean solution I see is to remove sigs altogether, it's a shame people need to abuse it. It's not a good solution but at least it would work.

I agree.

That might seem ironic since I have an ad in my sig. But yeh I have been looking in these ad sig topics and all had "weekly posting requirements", for me that just seems wrong so I never joined that. This current ad didn't have any posting requirements (for full members) so I thought it's ok. It's and easy BTC0.02 - $12 in a week without any effort, so yeh sorry guys

I do think generally ads in sig promote spamming tho. I think disallowing ads completely is ok (unless it's your own site or perhaps just a referral link) But another solution would be: no weekly posting requirements, no min. post requirements, only min. activity requirements allowed. This way the the websites still can select people who have a bit of posts (obviously paying someone who has 0 posts is also useless.) And since activity includes time the spamming should be much less. I think for most part this will help. Even tho people might start selling/buying accounts more to get the time requirement of activity :X but I guess it can be worth a try first.

I would more specifically say that something has to be done against spammers. There need to bee stricter rules against it. A post may not necessarily be spam, but just plainly not constructive. Those are the kind of posts people are using to boost their post count since spamming will obviously get them banned.

Yes I mean that.


More often than not, yes. If you have 70 activity and >2000 posts, the vast majority of users spammed their way there and deserve bans. Its not a clear and cut, "if you post this many posts in this many days you are a spammer" but there is a very direct correlation. You may be one of the rare ones, and of course you wouldnt be banned if your posts are quality posts, my point is that not many people with that many posts are as dedicated as you might be, and would rather spam short useless replies, rather than thoughtfully respond.

Like I said, we have been discussing this for months, and hopefully we can make a minor change, rather than removing paid advertising or signatures all together. The fact of the matter is that something needs to change, we just have yet to figure out how to change as little as possible, but still get the results we need.

I live in Poland - to earn in poland 2000zł in legal job you must be lucky to find it.

If I spend here half - more than a half of the day by posting (after reading) I can earn about 2000zł (maybe a bit less) without making a spam I am very fast typewriter and I know english good and I can read - so I am doing my best to write constructive posts, help people when they ask about something etc. And I am giving my best as I want to earn btc and not be banned...


This will not fix it. It will help to decrease a number of spam but will not fix it.

Anyway... I am waiting for some informations from Moderators about what @bitcointalk will do about it...

He means that posting isn't lucrative and to support yourself you would need an incredible number of posts. To reach this number you would probably need spam.


The best way to fix the spam is to not give people monetary incentive to increase their post count.

And what you mean by that? Am I doing something wrong by supporting myself financially by selling my sig and posting?
I had first payday already so chances are 0% for that
And I don't see a reason to ban people "because they are sig sellers - not spammers"
Maybe I misunderstood your quote..?


Oh is it my fault that you can earn only +14 activity per two weeks?
Oh so this is wrong that I am posting a lot yes?
My activity is 70 and I have >2000 posts.
Is it wrong?

So read my posts. All of them. Find a offtopic posts, "+1", "agree" and other shits like that. You wont.
I am reading threads and posting replies just like I was doing it before I've started to sell my sig.
Just after I did sell my sig I can read and post MORE! Because I buy some time for me so I can do it more than 30min daily.

Do what you want.
Ban all of us.

We will see how many users will stay here.

I understand problem with a spam. I really do. So try to figure out some other way to fix this!

My proposition:
1. Make longer delays between posts - like at least 3min.
2. Talk to SIG BUYERS and tell them that THEY will be BANNED if they will pay people who spam for their BTCperpost.
So they will be more careful and maybe they will check their sig sellers more often to check spam possibility.
3.If this is FORUM - make a voting - democracy! - let people with +150 activity vote about "ban ads in sigs"

I know I am willing to save my income and I am willing to be able to spend @bitcointalk many hours daily because this is my hobby - as a Bitcoin enthusiast.


Kind regards.

Well, if we cant find a suitable solution, signatures all together could be banned, or a slightly less radical approach would be to just ban paid sig advertising all together. If you are earning enough money by posting to support yourself financially, chances are you will be banned before your first payday. You are correct, there will always be spam, but paid advertising made the amount of spam go through the roof. Volume of posts does not equal quality of posts. If someone is posting a lot, but they are rubbish, they are making the forum worse, not better. A lot of vets who helped build the forum to what it is today are leaving and its just getting spammier. Our best course of action would be my original suggestion and have paid signature payout rates based on activity rather than post count. If you have 20x more posts than activity, your chances of getting banned are astronomical. We see those huge post counts and check through your last posts with a fine toothed comb. If there is a significant amount of junk, you are banned indefinately. Pre Signature Advertising, there were a few people banned per day, now they are a few peopled banned per 30 minutes. By doing it based on activity, paid signature advertising beneficiaries only need to post once per day, or 14 times per two week period, that means they can post 14 quality posts, rather than one word answers and faces.

This is not a good idea

1. Do you realize how many Bitcointalk users are earning money for their posts while they are unemployed? I know that many, many of them.

2. There always will be a spam somewhere - you cannot get rid of it just by disallow ads in signatures - sure, you will get out few spammers, but there will be more and more even with no adv in sigs.

3. If you will disallow ads in sigs users like me will be very sad and mad at you because this is the way to spend very nice time @bitcointalk and earn money at a same time - I spend @bitcointalk about 3-5 hours daily - sometimes more.
 And sorry, but if I will lost my job as a sig seller I will not be able to spend here so many hours ... because I will need to find a way to earn money

You might say to me "So you are posting just because of earnings?! Ban him!"
I will say to you "No.. I am posting so much because I love it - and I need money too so this is so great to earn money while posting!

I believe people like me can make @bitcointalk better - bigger forum ever!
So Bitcointalk is earning something from those Sig sellers too! Yes? Yes!

anyway... I hope @bitcointalk will never disallow ads in signatures ...

The easiest solution seems to be stopping them from paying per post.  Salty has the right idea.

That already is against the rules, we ban tons of spammers every day. We just cant get all of them.

I think one possible compromise is to make it against the rules to have consistently content-less posts (as determined by the moderators) while advertising in your signature.

The problem is that this is tough to enforce for every user.

Ideally, advertisers would pay bitcointalk.org for adspace.


That is good. The problem is that there are users that abuse the system. I clearly do know what I'm talking about because I linked an example of such a user. Reporting the user doesn't do anything because even if he is breaking a rule by not contributing, he won't be banned.

If you are monitoring your users and making sure they have quality posts, then I commend you, but there is an obvious difference between the posts of those here because they love Bitcoin and those here because they love money.

you don't know what are you talking about .... I am a sig seller and I can tell that you MIGHT have right for some of sig sellers but not for all of US.

We are paid to post CONSTRUCTIVE posts.

If our companies will see that we make only short-nonsense posts they might say bye bye to us.
So good sig seller is someone who is writing many posts (yes) and he indeed want his posts to be creative.

For example - science I am a sig seller I read a tooons of posts from all users, and I learned so many new things about bitcoin and not only.

So I improve my knowledge, reply to posts, and earn some BTC at 1 time.

What's wrong with this?

Anytime you see a post that is off topic you can report it to mods and post will be removed and guy will be not paid for this post.

So good sig sellers are just people who LOVE this forum, love to post in here and need some cash....

Eh..

We have been talking about this for a long while. We are looking for an effective compromise between removing Sigs all together, disallowing Signature advertising, allowing signature advertising, and allowing you to advertise your own things.

I still think allowing signature advertising, but basing payouts off of activity is the way to go. That way it leaves signature advertising for those who dont abuse it, it makes it so spammers only need to spam 7 posts per week for maximum profit, and it allows people to keep up signature advertising if they want.

Will link Theymos to this thread if I ever see him on IRC (which is rare).


I can agree with this. I think most people motivated enough to start their own service will be able to make an insightful post. Along with that, making dumb posts hurts your image and by extension the image of your company, which promotes good posts.


It's not about my signature. I've had that since long before every other user had an ad in their sig.

I would agree if it wasn't about your signature.

I'd like to see people only advertising their own stuff (for sale, for free, advice, resources, funny or serious quotes, identifiers) in sigs.

Does this thread seem useless?

Yes.

I would love the abilty to change my name and have donator as personal text because that looks badass. What do you mean people have donated and have not recieved their rank? Where can I find this? theymos recently paid 1 million for a new forum which would have a impact on the remaining donation amount and the up keep and security of that said software would cost a lot more which I would expect him wanting more donations soon?