Topic: raising awareness about some madness here (Read 1533 times)

There is nothing wrong with an active forum if you guys want less active forum dangle somewhere else I love this forum the way it is I love the craziness as long as people are not harassing others and this should be no problem,

When I first started reading the thread I thought the madness referred to the banning but it's clear that the real issue is the signature driven posts that are driving it.  I don't spend any time in off topic and don't think I can access the mod thread where the issue has been discussed (though I only just now looked) but I wonder if maybe the solution isn't in asking the signature sponsors to back off a bit.  That's a lot fewer people than all the user accounts.  They should also have an incentive not to be associated with crappy posts.

Now that mining BTC has "gone pro" the signature campaigns are my main source of btc.  Sad perhaps but true.

Maybe another possibility is a signature whitelist of some kind, not based on rank, since basing it on rank can encourage even more posts.

I also think people should use ignore more.

Good Luck.

Forum signatures show how the free market works, a simple supply and demand thing. This place is where bitcoin enthusiasts meet, and since we don't have a bitcoin TV, and sites like Coindesk don't allow commercial banners, business owners had to find a way to advertise. Being a campaign manager I naturally have a biased view of the whole thing, but IMO you're constantly tryng to make it more difficult for people to break the rules, instead of just punishing them more strictly. I'm sure if the staff requested, we could agree not to pay users that were banned for spamming.

They do get short one week bans. It seems that's the first option and also your first warning. I don't think a permenant ban would be given for the first time, but those would be reserved for persistent spammers or rule breakers who have failed to heed the repeated warnings.

Like i mentioned before I don't think that 1 week ban should be as a "warning". This should be just an action taken against spammers. Spammers should get bans from time to time, like i said from 1 week up to 1 month. But I don't think there should be permanent ban for spammers. Maybe only those who got banned several times for spamming.

Your questions can be answerd by the previous posts really. I agree a warning would be fairer and should be the first resort, but the mods serm to have tried that and in their opinion it doesn't work, so the week ban is their official warning.

This is isn't a irrepressible problem. Looking from my eyes, would It be hard just to give warnings to people who spams useless posts mentioning that they will get ban from 1 week up to 1 month If they wont start posting full-fledged posts? Is It hard to do so? I have no idea how many spammers there are but If there are like major 100 or more spammers, It wouldn't be hard to deal with them?

Yes, when I was referring to warnings being useless I meant specifically this type of poster/situation. There are many levelheaded and good people here who respond well. These folks on the other hand, are paid advertisers, and like the saying goes, money talks, bullshit walks.  

I've only permanently banned one so far IIRC, the rest (close to 30 now since yesterday) are about 80% 1 week, 20% 2 weeks (the really bad ones). Second ban 4 weeks/8 for the bad ones, third may be permanent, depends on who it is and their history.  

I'm not going to set an exact criteria for posts, if one needs that, then one is probably part of the problem and a waste of my time.

Now at the current situation you guys are banning accounts that has posted a lot of useless posts. But you are not looking for solution to this. So what you want Is only constructive posts on forum? You should set exact detailed criterion for posts. Who doesn't follow them should get a warning, and give exact time to stop posting posts that doesn't meet criterion. If the time exceeds to start making normal constructive posts ban for that account should be applied BUT I don't think It should be permanent. Bans for accounts that keeps posting useless posts should be up to 1 month in my opinion. When time expires and he/she starts to post useless posts again, he will instantly get 30 days ban again.

I think that would be a solution? What do you think?

I do give warnings from time to time, and sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't. Spammers wielding ads in their sigs are generally a group for whom warnings, at least in my limited experience, rarely work. They tend to get very defensive if I tell them they should work on improving the quality of their posts.

Well you don't have to make 'threats' per se, but a stern warning would be more courteous first and I'm sure they'd then know who you were after a quick PM  . I can only speak for myself, but if I ever got an official warning for something I'd be more likely to tread carefully and change my ways and would be pretty annoyed if I just found out I was banned without warning. I certainly wouldn't ignore it that's for sure, but I can't speak for everyone and obviously you have more experience on this than me, but just my BTC0.00000002  .

I don't make threats.

I've asked for such an option before, but really if you need that option to delete so many of a user's posts, they should probably be banned anyway. Still a good option to have to clean up after the ban though. Should be suggested for the new forum software.  


Maybe, like I said though, most people don't take pm warnings seriously. Hell most people probably don't even know who I am if they don't read meta, which most don't. Why would they listen to me? No use debating what might've been though.

Well that may be a concern and should certainly be taken into consideration, but it shouldn't be a problem if it's clear you are not just posting rubbish constantly for payment. I'm also sure you would be perfectly fine if you didn't have a signature, so you wont be discriminated against purely for being from another culture or a non-English speaking country.

also not everyone can express themselves very well like you can. What if there from another culture then this forum is being very judgemental on peoples posting style.

Why you all foucos your energy on nonsense when theymos gave us the ignore button.  I like freedom of expression.  I read here alot of stuff dont respond much but love to read what others say here.

You don't have to delete them all, but I still think a quick warning threatening a ban if they continue would be more beneficial to all involved and they'd more often than not get the message, and if they didn't then a brief ban would give them time for that to sink in. Could an option to delete users posts with check boxes not be implemented?


I don't think the first option should be banning everybody from having signatures altogether. As a last resort ban the actual paid campaigns or the urls of specific offenders who don't keep in line with policing their own users/deals, but I guess that can even be circumvented as links can just be cloaked easy enough. I think a lot of people will get the message with the recent bans and it'll spread some fear or warning to others though, but I still think a message to offenders first would've been much better.

There's too many to delete posts one by one, it takes 3-5 seconds to delete one post. Deleting posts in threads is different because there is a quick moderation option available via checkboxes and they can all be deleted at once, this isn't possible on a users post history page, has to be done one by one. PM warnings are useless in my experience and you just end up in circular arguments. The week ban is the warning.


Well it's our only option at the moment, besides just let it continue. if this doesn't work then we'll need to explore other options, such as disabling sigs, not allowing links, or filtering links from services such as the ones who buy signature space for ads.


I'll get around to them eventually, I have a whole thread dedicated to maintaining a list of these folks with input from all moderators welcome. Also have users pm'ing me with suggestions, a lot of people are sick of this.


It takes at least two months to get an account worth selling signature space on, I'm pretty sure it'll work.


I haven't seen many complaints, just two people who didn't know how long they were banned for and why because I forgot to add the reason and duration in the text field (I pm'ed them when I saw their post). Most of these folks know full well why they were banned.
 

BadBear, we obviously have a different opinion on signature campaigns but I'm perfectly fine with that. I won't go far supporting my opinion and I also appreciate that you're here explaining what is happening and giving us some insight. But honestly, what's to earn out of giving people the impression there is a "risk to get banned"? A handful of people probably already got banned. And this happens while a nother handfull of people is having a daily three digit post count. Do you think that the ones that got banned are going to come back and never spam again in fear of not getting banned again? According to my humble opinion again you should At least let them know why they got baned in more detail. Let them know specifically what post of them was it that you didn't like. Don't just press the "ban button" without getting into the effort to explain why the user got banned. This is going to prevent people from being repeat offenders and also help make the situation more clear. You should do this anyway if you don't want people to come back at you complaining for an unfair ban.

Because to me, it seems normal to get complains if accounts get banned without any previous warning. (And no I don't think the posts you made as warnings are proper for this situation, it's so easy to miss one post out of thousands no matter how ipmportant it is.)

I think deleting the offending posts and/or messaging them a warning that if they continue to post crap at their current rate they will be banned will be a stern enough warning. If they're having their posts actually deleted then this will obviously make them step up their content as it's not worth it to them and is actually counter-productive to keep doing so. If after a warning they continue to act the same then give them a weeks ban as punishment and then they should get the idea. Like you said, many don't want to risk their accounts as they are valuable to them so banning outright, especially without a warning (if you didn't give them any other warning), should be a last resort and could probably be avoided in most cases.