Topic: Signature spam - how to force users to read before replying? (Read 673 times)

At least users will be warned and consider starting a new thread when they want to reply on a thread that hasn't been posted for 120 days or more. I think it will be the benchmark for us to start a new thread.

But if they believe that the replies are quite useful and important then I don't think it will count as necrobump. Just useless replies whose purpose is crashing thread is part of necrobump in my opinion.

If there's a recent and active one then no, you shouldn't create a new thread if it basically deals with the same material being discussed.  However, if you do a search to find out if there's a thread about something you're thinking of starting a thread about and it turns out there's a thread from 2 years ago, then I'd say go ahead and create a new one. 

"Necrobumping" or resurrecting an old thread is against the rules, but I'm not sure if the rules spell out how old the thread needs to be in order to consider it a necrobump.  I think it also has to do with how relevant/important the post is that bumps it.  Sometimes you see members bumping threads from 2012 (or earlier) just to write something short and stupid.  There's no need for that.  And some would consider bumping a 4-5 month old thread to be necrobumping, but I think that's a little extreme.

You could say that. Funnily though, those that are updated/ active tend to have people spouting the same thing over and over.

I wasn't aware of that, thank you. However, I guess it's not a good idea to create a new discussion thread if one already exists with a similar topic and active discussion?

The information in an already existing thread might be outdated. Bitcoin and the blockchain is an evolving ecosystem. The rules and solutions proposed a few years ago might not work today, or the steps to resolve specific problems could have changed. Don't forget that we are also dealing with different software and hardware and what might be the best option for one software/hardware, might not work as well for the other.

Very often it's not suggested to necro bump an old thread unless you are bringing something useful to the discussion. It is suggested to users to create their own threads instead.

I actually agree with that mindset, but only for huge forums like this one. Yes, usually in RPG forums, opening a thread that has the same discussed subject should be closed or merged with the official one. But, for bitcointalk or any other forum that has millions of users, I find it unfair to not be able to discuss freely.

If someone opened a thread back in 2011 talking about mining with GPUs, it doesn't mean that I have to necessarily ask my question there. I could simply create my thread explaining my issues. Remember, once a new thread is created, it notifies the sub-forum watchers and they can judge by the topic title if they're interested in.

The wall observer is the only exception fortunately; I honestly couldn't be notified every time the price dumped/pumped with a new thread.

When I came here, I noticed that a lot of members were opening up new topics when there was already a similar discussion going on. This is prohibited in most online communities. I wonder why it does not apply here as well? This might have something to do with the mindset of today's youth who want everything instantly. My experience of using various social media platforms for many years has taught me to respect the netiquette and best practices of communities.

I totally agree with that, some things are better cut at the root than letting them develop to the point where they become shitposting mega-threads. We have one such recommendation in Bitcoin Discussion, and it would be good if each board has an additional explanation of what a low quality topic is and what all users should adhere to.

I think with the following highlighted reasons no system would work effectively on the forum, I think those were the reasons the trust system is not moderated, it could have been worse than what we have now.

This is not even the worse part of it, de-meriting would cause 12th century slavery on the forum, merit source would be more powerful than theymos ; having the right to de-merit already merited users to scratch if you deal speak against them, you must be loyal to them all the days of your life on the forum.

Imagine Campaign Managers having to deal with deranking; more headaches to deal with too. Definitely not a good idea.

Just because something works (If you say so as I never visited that forum) on altcointalk doesn't mean it would work here. This is much bigger forum, and with people having financial incentive to retaliate against each other and long standing feuds. Theoretically, I like the idea of downvoting, but knowing bitcointalk it would be abused. Forum staff is probably aware of that and that's why we won't see something like that implemented anytime soon. Same goes for de-meriting, which was also suggested more times, and would lead to the same thing.

This could be a great factor to consider before putting such a system in place but it not different from the trust system on BTT where the trust system is being used as a weapon of retaliation. Like I said before there is no perfect system, the dislike and like system would work perfectly if it's limited to certain ranks (Sr. Members upwards )

On the Atlcointalk forum there is a + karma and -Karma on every profile to fight against shiposters and it works perfectly because negative karma reduces your activity points thus making it impossible for such user to rank up.

Good job! I agree, reporting posts is not in vain. Some people might say "this is not our job" or "its pointless as spammers never learn" but I've seen cases where people posting changed for better after contacting them.


Not strictly connected to this, but what I would like to see is people reporting poorly written opening posts in the topics more often, instead just answering them, as it's kinda harder to get such topics deleted when they get more  answers.

In addition to your post repetition report, you can ask the moderators to close this thread.
Sometimes a lot of the same topics appear, we cannot fix it. Every year, views on this or that thing may be different. Therefore, let there be many similar topics, different in the time of creation and timely closed. This is better than the existing mega streams, in which information flows "from empty to empty", at a time when everyone understands that no one will read posts written long ago.

I'm glad you're back on that thread, it's not just an obvious example that people don't read - but that they persistently refuse to understand what it's all about. Even the OP continues with its thesis about 1 BTC -> 60 cars, after all that has been written - which is really amazing, maybe we are dealing with a poorly trained artificial intelligence



I did a test and report 3 posts from this thread, by using this in report "The user repeats exactly what has already been said in the post" as suggested by @LeGaulois and all 3 post are deleted. I know that some will surely hate me because I will report such posts, but I believe that it can have a good effect and that some users can change for the better.

I remembered game-protect, a Legendary member got permbanned for plagiarism though so I guess we're still not out of the woods

I don't think that there should be any kind of discriminations based upon the ranks. The posts should be deleted by the moderators if they think it is not up to the mark and not first check, what is the rank of the user.

It could be the case that since few of your posts were deleted, you now giving more aatention in your post and therefore they are being not deleted and it is not linked with your Sr Member rank.

Let's say for example you report some scammer/abuser, and he retaliates by activating his army of alts that are following you around and keep disliking/downvoting your posts. If mods have to intervene in those cases, that would just mean more work for them. Bare in mind that bitcointalk is different than reddit (which I also regularly use for many years), with all these signature campaigns and financial incentives. Another thing that you can be sure of is if something can be abused here, it will be.



Exactly this. Even the most notorious shitposters will start asking themselves what are they doing wrong, and maybe even come to Meta asking, as many of them did exactly that after few dozens of their posts got deleted.



I don't think that merit system failed, and that it's purpose was to remove all spam (which is impossible anyway). If that was indeed the case, theymos would simply make everyone start from the beginning instead airdropping the merit based on activity. The way I understand it, one of the ideas behind introducing the merit system is to make it much harder for new  shitposters/spammers to rank up, therefore reducing amount of spam done via signature campaigns.

As someone who started from scratch and went through that "grind", I must say that shitposter will have a very hard job  reaching anything above Member rank, meaning merit system works. Maybe its not perfect, but what is?

I feel that there is some leeway to higher ranked memebers, when I used to be full member I used to get my posts deleted frequently but since I became senior it seems to be less and less. It could sure be some kind of fallacy ofc.

Yes, as long as they can make new posts, they will continue to spam without any notice to deleted posts.
For example, take a look at post history of this user (Archived). You can't find any meaningful post. The user is still posting while he/she has more than 300 deleted posts. (Reference: BPIP)

There is no doubt a user with that high number of deleted posts should be banned.
I am not saying any user with more than X deleted posts should be banned. But we definitely need more strict rules for spamming.
Many of users who spam for their signature campaigns are high-ranked members. I feel moderators never ban high-ranked users for spamming?

First of all we can encourage anyone to make a good post on topic, but we can't force them at all even not by the forum. Deleting their posts isn't going to prevent them and they will do it rapidly since they need to get paid from the signature. Most probably it will hard for moderators to judge moderators either post should delete or not without reading the all replies on the main thread. If you ask me if am I reading all the replies on a thread, then I will answer no. Because it's quite complicated and a waste of time. Because some people just repeating the same thing by changing or spinning words. But of course, I have been trying to read replies by constructive users, because I can learn from them. To be honest, a lower pay rate campaign can't expect high constructive users, as a result, this Kind of spam happening.

This is in line with another good example you mentioned recently, whereby on a given thread in Bitcoin Discussion with barely a few pages of posts (at the time I made the stat), the ratio of those that understood and commented on a given idea was 1:5 (1 understood it for every 5 that did not).

Granted that the OP of that thread wasn’t very clear in his exposure, and that proper comprehension was achievable only after reading the referenced source within the thread’s OP, but quickly triggered answers solely based on the heading seemed to be a constant there.

As you state,cases whereby a proper answer is given, and the subsequent posts revert back to simply answering the OP’s post, instead of building on the provided answers are rather frequent too unfortunately.

Not much to be done though. Reporting for being clueless of blatantly wrong is not a factor, unless it’s done within a low value post (which would be the sustainable basis).

I understood you perfectly, but this is not about scammers at all, we all know that scam is not moderated on the forum - it is not clear to me why you compare scammers and signature spammers in question here? I still think that nothing that makes the forum a better place is a waste (loss) of time, because you've only been here a little over 1 year - and you have no idea what the forum was like 5 years ago - some campaigns were run by bots, there was no selection process, post control...


As far as I can see, this user has an advertisement in his signature, but this year he wrote only a dozen posts and is not regularly active at all - such users are not a problem for the forum - but he is certainly a shitposter, there is no doubt about that.



You forget that it is not easy to start from scratch, and it is difficult for every shitposter to earn even 1 merit - let alone the 10 needed to become a Member rank and enter a signature campaign. Members who have hundreds of alt accounts are a different story.

The only thing I agree with is that campaign managers need to raise their standards, but I wrote before that there is a problem with a very small number of quality members who can fill places in new campaigns - and they are faced with the dilemma of filling places with members who are available (regardless of their quality), or that the campaign does not achieve the desired visibility due to lack of participants.

You misjudged me. I didn't say that scammers shouldn't be caught or we should stop exposing them; if anything, it's pretty obvious that scammers should be busted and I encourage every user from every marketing forum existing to fight them. What I did say is that trying to stop someone from making shitposts is a loss of time, which is different.

You should fight for plagiarized papers, but how can you stop a guy like the one below from making non-stop meaningless posts?


You can't. Even if you report them with accuracy and get it banned, he'll just create another account and continue doing it, if he hasn't a hundred left. You'll just ruin your time. The solution for this problem is to cut his incentive, which would mean manager responsibility.

And how are we to achieve that, we can't force change if those we're forcing it on aren't willing to change. The sad truth is that we can't stop spam totally on the forum and to some extent they're needed to differentiate between quality post and the rest.

Although the merit system was introduced to do this, it hasn't been so effective so far since we're still have the spammers with their ranks. The merits didn't do anything harmful to them, it only reduced their chances of increasing in rank but that doesn't mean they can't join paid campaigns.

Obviously the campaigns they'll be chances to enter isn't as quality as the ones requiring high earned merits but still, we have to understand the spammers don't care. As for what we can do, self moderating the threads will create could help in reducing the level of spams we see on our created threads and for boards such option aren't available we continue reporting the spams and keep hopes in the hands of the moderators to do the needful.

If there's a thousand posts which are report worthy, that signals that there either needs to be more moderation in that particular section or there isn't enough users reporting there. There should be more than enough moderators between us to handle extra reports. If there isn't, that signals to theymos that there needs to be additional moderators considered.

Its never a bad thing to report a post that you genuinely think breaks the rules. Only good comes from it. You either; get a better feel for the forum guidelines, remove spam from the forum or get better coverage of the forum by indicating there needs to be more moderators to theymos.

As I posted above, users shouldn't really factor whether they report a post or not on the pressure or workload of the moderators. Just report it. The worst that'll happen is it'll either get marked bad or remain unhandled if missed.


This has been tried, and tested before. It never really caught on. The thing is, there's so much bias, and subjection when it comes to creating a list, genuinely good users might be bundled into the list simply because the user curating it has a vendetta against them. Plus, its almost impossible to remain unbias especially without any real defined guidelines to users added to the list. So, there will be a huge difference in severity of user, the problem with that is they all get branded as one.

I'm curious to learn about them and keep in mind that there is no perfect system as every system has it own flaws, what we've been operating on the forum is a closed system where the mod do everything behind the scenes and make decisions on their own, while Reddit operates an open system whereby the people on the thread decide what reply is quality and which is not thru the downvote and upvote system without reporting to mod.

I've been here for 4 years and one thing I found out, I think there were a lot of spam in the system compared to what we have now all thanks to the merits system.

Don't abuse the trust system, spammers are not scammers.

I think you are wrong when say that someone cannot be forced to change their habits, and that it is a waste of time - if we had had such an attitude a few years ago, this forum would have literally drowned in spam - but some members then strongly opposed to that and took matters into their own hands - @hilariousandco took over the old YoBit signature campaign, and @Lauda BitMixer which immediately gave visible results - and was ultimately further enhanced with the merit system.

Furthermore, the forum was cleared of spammers thanks to someone who processed the forum from all plagiarized posts, and as a result thousands of such members were permanently eliminated - for those of us who have been on the forum for 5+ years, the change is more than obvious.

If more people were constantly reporting such posts and if such posts were regularly deleted and after x deleted posts such users get a temporary ban, I think it would be more than a clear message for them to start reading and stop being ordinary spammers for a change.

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I have also reported such posts and have had no success so far, unfortunately they have remained unhandled - and I believe that mods do not have an easy task handling such reports, and it certainly takes time to read all the relevant posts.

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I'm going to try, not only because I think it's the worst thing to ignore someone and pretend it's normal, but because sometimes I feel like I'm communicating with stupid bots and not living people.

It's really annoying when some users post something really good and there isn't even a single reply on their post and meaningless posting continues from meaningless users.

There are some ways that come to my mind:
1. We should report every similar post with the title: Meaningless! But that can be an extra pressure on moderators to check every post.
2. We should tag the users who don't read anything and reply blindly (not a great idea).
3. We should create a crowdsourced blacklist of those users and anyone will be able to add them in their ignored list (If it's possible, let's hide Ignored users from the threads they post, like they don't exist).

It will just make their "work" meaningless and logically should lessen the attempts. Otherwise, we can't really force anyone.
Maybe if we PM those users and ask to read before a reply can do the trick, who knows...

So what if mod doesn't delete the post your are reporting? It's not a big deal at all, and anyone who reports the posts regularly will eventually experience that ( I have 71 report marked as "bad") , but that doesn't mean the we should stop reporting.



I can see various ways in which that like/dislike system would get abused. There is something similar on reddit, where comments with more downvotes than upvotes get hidden, but I am not sure that it would work here.

This is it, this is the point individual differences play in, different understanding and how people react, the mod might react positively to the Same post I reacted negatively about. The only solution to reduce spam is to replace the " Report to moderator" with the " likes and dislike" button where a reply with more dislike get deleted

Don't hesitate to report such posts. I've done it many times, and more often than not drivel gets deleted, no matter how long it is. And if someone gets enough posts deleted, maybe he change his ways, or at least ask what he is doing wrong, as they occasionally come to meta asking exactly that.

Although reporting a thousand posts seems a little extreme, that's the job of the moderators.

Mods are paid positions, so they help keep the forum clean. As they are unable to cover every nook and cranny of the forum, that's when the reporting feature comes in.

Reporting a thousand post to moderators only make it harder for them to focus on another area of the forum. We need to understand and know that people see things in different ways, as an Agricultural and food processing engineer I was taught that in every chemical processing there is always negative or positive reactions, the way people read and understand differs, the way people write also differs.

I've seen someone write 8 sentences without making a single meaning just to avoid their post being deleted or reported because the generation we have now caught a glimpse of a two-liner post as spam.

Does the forum have another meaning of what spam is?

You can't. When you have a budget of $1000 each week, you are unlikely to have $200 or any amount unspent each week. At the end of the day, you have to pick the best from applicants. Now, since we have a lot of signature campaign available, can you fill all the quota if you look for high quality users? I believe it's not possible because there will never be such huge amount of high quality users.
Moreover, bounty payment with native token has no value almost. Can you stop that? Well, forum can. Forum can simply say, BTC, USDT or any other coin which have value is the option but that's not going to happen I think.
I can't see any good option without interfere from the admin.

This is more true when those poster don't want to change themselves, then only way to stop them is to make some rules which is not possible in this case.

You can give  glasses to a person who is blind so that he may read but there is no pill developed for spammers.

First of all, what exactly is considered to be low paying signature campaign? Is 50 USD per week low, for 15-20 posts per week, as majority of signature campaigns pay that, or even more ? As someone who writes few thousands posts on few other (non paying) forums, and doing that for ~20 years, if someone told me few years ago that I will get paid that amount of money for forum posts, I would tell him that he is crazy. Of course, that number is low when compared to few best campaigns, but realistically? I don't think so. I have a feeling that people here lost the perspective a little bit, when it comes to that.

There are simply way too many campaigns currently, and lack of quality members leads to managers having to lower their standards. I am also not surprised that advertisers are not willing to increase the payment considering the fact that forum ain't as active as it used to be.

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@OP I suggest that you report few such posts just to try it out, and if its marked good, then continue doing so. Maybe we need some coordinated action against that, that could be done via Spambusters club.

That's probably because the serious discussion boards don't have a particular subject so there are a lot of topics in these boards that if posted elsewhere for example they would be moved to off-topic right away and we know off-topic discussion on a bitcoin forum doesn't really get that much discussion.

P.S. There are other places on this forum that have high quality discussions such as the "technical" boards and you can also always self-moderate your topic and keep it clean.

People do same thing on Reddit when there are no signatures, as previously suggested (you see what I did there?) it would be better idea to have some rules with campaign managers that make them hire quality posters. Shitposts will decline naturally.

That's almost like a trend on every thread out there, unless the OP closely monitors it

Unless we go post @ Serious Discussion/ Ivory Tower, rest assured the discussion quality would be top-notch, albeit a ghost town

I think there is no way to force people to read. Well, maybe unless campaign managers will stop accepting people who leave such replies. Personally, I'm trying to avoid discussion topics longer than 1-2 pages. In early stage of thread you can see some people who actually read all posts. But what's going then, it's mostly spam. Though, I don't report such generic shitposts, unless it's unbeleavable terrible.
But I think it's problem not on Bitcointalk. On social media I often see people leaving comments after reading just title. They don't bother to read whole article. On Bitcointalk there is another factor - money. Why to put effort and waste time when you still can get paid in more easy way.

The only ways to stop signature spam is for the forum to take control of signature advertising, or for campaign managers to start being held accountable.  If campaign managers have more strict standards of entry, these spammers would find that after a while they aren't getting any kind of return on their time spent.  That's the only way they'll ever stop.  Some of these spammers are probably happy to make less than a dollar a day.  You can't fight that sort of thing with moderation.

I would suggest campaign managers stop accepting new users based on who posts on their [OPEN] threads and start actually seeking out real established members of the community to advertise signature campaigns.  It's ridiculous the way it's currently being done.  It is crystal clear that entire process has been setup so that advertisers don't have to be involved and campaign managers can spend the least amount of time possible finding participants and making payments.  I'm not out to get campaign managers, but the source of this problem is easily identifiable and nothing is going to change until they start being held accountable, as I doubt they're going to take it among themselves to start spending more time actually finding decent participants that post here for legitimate reasons.  Even the way that campaigns are paid by posts and not by views is clearly an invite for spam.  Not a lot of thought was put into how signature campaigns are run here and it shows.

It will surely get deleted later on if no one reported the post yet. We really can't stop them to post more when they notice that some of their post got deleted if that person is only joining signature campaigns to earn some crypto. I even experienced before that when I created a thread which my purpose/goal is to help and find other solution (more like a back up solution) for other people to know but still only few people are into the discussions which proves that they only post and go. It's good that the post that is shit or spam are deleted by mod either mod found it or got reported.

Interesting thought:

At the moment I am wearing a signature that is managed by Hhampuz. He is somewhat strict with his "quality control" of posts.
If he was not and allowed crap posts, would it be better to remove the posts or to ban the manager.

Cut off the head of the issue so to speak. If you allow your posters to post crap, you get banned.
Eventually the problem would sole itself. OR the problem would become 1000x worse as everyone just registered new accounts to manage campaigns and it all went to hell.

-Dave

I feel it's kind of a cat-and-mouse game. The mods delete the posts, the users notice them (via PM) and proceedsto churn out even more to compensate the removal.

Unless there's some consequence involved, which I'm not sure if the mods are willing to enforce them themselves.

More recently, I created a similar thread about the fact that users do not read at all, what kind of conversation is developing on the topic. After the responses were received, I realized that it is possible to send reports to moderators from time to time, and from experience, I was convinced that many posts are successfully deleted. In addition, you can write and ask the moderators to close the topic, due to monotonous responses.
I think if we do not keep order on the forum, the moderators simply will not master the volume of messages that regularly appear on the forum.

No, I don't report these posts, I just ignore them and move on to the next post in the thread. I don't know how the mods think so I don't know if a report like that will be market as 'good'. From their perspective, it may appear that my opinion of low quality post is subjective. As a general rule, what I report as zero or low value are mostly one-liners that add nothing to the quality of discussion.

This problem will remain evident as long as there are campaigns that favor quantity over quality. A way to address this would be to introduce stricter rules for signature campaigns. And, I agree with BlackHatCoiner, campaign managers should bear more responsibility.

I report such messages from time to time. I add a note saying something like "The user repeats exactly what has already been said in the post ". It has always been effective, but sometimes I'm so frustrated that I am so lazy to report the post concerned.
They're smart, they repeat 90% and add 1 unique sentence, just to look "original"

These guys who are just parroting are very annoying. When you're reading a 10-pages thread, by the 9th page you don't even remember what the original topic was about. LOL.

Just to add, I've realized also that if you have users you've clicked on "Ignore", you can easily find yourself doing the same thing, i.e. parroting what has already been said

There is no way to force people to read all the posts in the topic and far more important there is no way to actually make them read even the first post completely and not only the title. I have a worse example

Bitcoin should be taxed

Lazy OP, one line of text and that it, the problem is that he cut the last part which I mentioned in my post 10 replies below :

Personal opinion, I don't think you will get all of those deleted, it's not really spam, he did post his opinion regarding the topic, it can be stupid it can be not well informed, it is useless and it adds nothing but I'm not sure the mods will take action against all posts of this kind, have a feeling Theymos will not want this either.

Spending time doing anything other than the minimum amount of reading that is necessary to squeeze out a post is antithetical to their objectives. They want to churn out as many posts as possible with the minimal amount of effort so they're not going to waste time reading all the other posts. Unless there's bans issued or campaign mangers are cracking down on low quality posts then they'll continue to do it. Best thing you can do right now is just report them.

You can't force anyone to do anything. It's a free discussion board and if you feel that they're shitposts report them. I'm afraid, though, that the problem is that you have nothing to gain from this procedure. These people don't even pretend to be interested in the topic and they want to get it done so they can get paid. If you report them, you're firstly losing your valuable time and secondly, you're just making it harder for them, but they'll keep repeating it.

I believe that if we wanted to get rid of the signature spam, we should look at the issue from its root, which is IMHO, low paying signature campaigns. A forum rule could be desired; campaign managers should be a little more responsible for those who hire. You can't run a campaign whereas lots of your participants get their posts deleted due to report accuracy and you aren't even accounted to it.

I've been guilty of this myself, but it's usually in threads with multiple pages that I don't feel like reading--and most of the time I don't feel like reading because of all the shitposts present or that I anticipate being present (it's never a bad assumption that they're going to be there).  Usually if I find that I've suggested the same thing as someone else in the thread when I go back and read, as I often do, I edit my post to acknowledge that fact.

That's me, though, and I know exactly what you're talking about, Lucius.  But no, I don't report posts that duplicate suggestions or information unless they're absolute garbage shitposts.  I probably should do more reporting than I currently do, but frankly I don't see a lot of one-line nonsense posts now that I stay away from Bitcoin/Altcoin Discussion.

I seriously doubt any amount of reporting is going to force anyone to do anything--certainly not force sig spammers to start reading, which most of them probably can't anyway because their English is so bad.  I don't know how bad the situation is on the local boards, but there's always been a language barrier problem for bounty hunters/sig spammers in the English section. 

You can certainly report those posts and they might even be marked good, but I don't think it'll change much overall.  There will always be a new batch of no-reading signature campaign spammers to take the place of those who probably wouldn't have gotten the message anyway.

Most of us know that there are members who don't read anything but OP or maybe just the title and base their posts on that - I think we can call them signature spammers without any hesitation (in case they have signatures, of course). Realistically, such posts should be reported, but it has taken on such a large scale that I think I could report at least 100 such posts every day.

Specifically, I will cite examples that emerged after my post in which I (at least I hope) gave a concrete and unambiguous answer to the question posed - and take a look at the posts that follow after that.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.57252709 (archived)
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.57244718 (archived)

I wonder if anyone reports posts like this on a daily basis and if those reports are marked as "good" - and if we can otherwise force people to finally start reading posts and give some meaningful answers.