Topic: Since 2018, what did you contribute to prevent signature ads removed globally? - page 3. (Read 1418 times)

My major contribution to stop spam has been to develop myself hugely in over a year on the forum, learning how and the right way to post, so I do not fall on the wrong side of the line and increase the number of shitposters that roam the forum everyday.

To me that's a wonderful personal contribution, one that if everyone takes they'll be better persons here and it'll reflect on the forum, instilling sanity and stamping out laziness.If only everyone can behave in the most appropriate way expected, then in here would be a better place for sure.
This one is never going to happen, to put in the words of theymos:

Merit system (original version), upgraded merit system (aims at Junior Members); your Spambuster club in 2018; and the bot to fight against plagiarism this year; together contribute to clean the forum. This year, thousands of accounts banned with supports from that bot.
I think the upgraded merit system brought a powerful tool to stop spammers creating new accounts, and their spamming severity and intensity decreased considerably too.
Bot (this year) cleaned up more by searching, reporting, and consequently help to ban so many accounts permanently, not only Brandnew, Newbies, but also top-ranks, like Hero and Legendary.

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I guess which kind of next upgrade for merit system? KYC, possibly?

In the summer of 2018 the situation with the spam was so awful and I got so tired reporting alone so on 21 of July, I created the SpamBuster's Club, after that we have reviewed more than 20 000 accounts, significant part of those got banned. Thousands of comments got removed,and I think we pushed theymos to come up the badge idea,(just assumption here). Many things changed after the club was announced.

Signature itself is harmless, it is just as same as username. If users don't abuse it with harzadous links, or abuse it by spamming and get a few cents from their spams.
Basically, everyone has rights to show off their ideas, discussions here; but if they abuse and make mono-conversations, thing will be different.
I hope the thread reminds shitposters that admin gave them second chance, or third chance (second one is merit system, third one is upgraded-merit-system, with Junior Member demotion), more correctly; to keep signature industry running here; gave them chance to earn some money. But if they ignore kindness of admin, who knows they will have fourth chance or not?

Signatures are an important way for the forum to reward active and responsible members. Almost all of the forums that don't allow signatures with links are of a far lower quality. However, it is a privilege and not a right, and members should respect it. Members should be aware that links and comments in their signatures affect their reputation, and they should research any projects they are promoting, before they add them to their signature. Even better is to restrict yourself to the promotion of services and products that you actually use, and thus have some knowledge and experience of them.

Signatures are also used for political comments, and news reports that some members consider to be important. I think this is a useful benefit as long as it is used responsibly.

So what could be a viable alternative to a global ban? One possibility is the removal of signature rights from a member who is promoting a fraudulent product. If this ban was for 3 or 6 months, then just the threat of it could encourage members to research the sites they are considering promoting before adding them to their signature. That ban could be imposed across all known alts as well.

As average forum member without much power I can't much. I'm just not spamming myself, trying to report worst shitposts and not giving merits to spammers. Maybe I could do more, but lack of time and laziness don't help :/. And I'm doing these mentioned things without thinking about signature campaigns. I just want to see quality forum. And I feel huge respect to users who reported thousands of shitposts or avarding best posters with merits actively. They're making this forum into better place. And in my opinion, merit system is doing it's job very well.

Wanna know an easier way? Be a dick to shitposters -> they get mad -> they enrage all across the forum -> someone goes deep in on them, dig out the shady stuff -> expose them -> get them tagged -> they never use the account ever again-> repeat. Voila. All because of saying "fuck you bitch", or something you'd possibly say: "go to Halifax"

I agree with the fact that there are still many high ranked member who shitposts. They were lucky to get the airdropped merit. It was not that hard to rank up before.

But there are so many uses who are good posters despite they got their rank when there were no merit. Those users are regularly earning merits and some of them have few thousand of merits to be honest.

The easy way to differentiate a shitposter than a good one is to see how frequent they earn merit. However one have to admit this fact that not all good posts gets merit. There are a lot of factor involves in earning merit not just good quality post.


You seems pushing it hard :-P

According to History of bitcointalk.org's rank system, it is the second changes on forum's rank system; and it is a biggest one, so far.
So far, we have witnessed three periods with three rank systems

• Without activity requirements (November 22, 2009 - January 22, 2018)
• Activity requirements (June 18, 2013 - January 23, 2018)
• Activity requirements + Merit requirements (January 24, 2018 - by now)

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I actually want to see a short-term experiment on a forum-wide sig ban.

Before January 2018, actmyname and I started tagging shitposters around the time both of us got added to DT.  This created a firestorm in Meta, since having red trust from a DT member disqualifies a lot of campaign participants.  I've since admitted that it was a bad use of the trust system, but you have to understand that the situation was out of control and nobody had any tools to combat shitposters. 

Theymos did not approve of our actions and "requested" that all those feedbacks be removed or else I'd get removed from DT.  That message was relayed through my DT1 sponsor at the time.  Then the merit system was created (or it could have been before; I can't recall exactly), which was a huge relief to me, because I was spending a considerable amount of time seeking out the worst posters and giving them negative trust.  After the merit system was put into place there was no need for negging spammers/shitposters.

That probably had nothing to do with preventing sig campaigns from being erased, but my actions along with actmyname's at least lit a fire under some people's asses and made people realize that something had to be done, that the quality of the forum was becoming unbearable.

Hell yes it was a good step.  It's one of the best improvements I've ever seen here, and I'm very grateful to Theymos for coming up with something so clever.  And while there are still tons of shitposters, I've definitely seen a lot of improvement in a lot of members' post quality as a result.  If you have some incentive to rank up in the form of earning more money in a campaign and the only way you can do it is to improve your post quality, you know damn well a lot of members are going to step up and try harder.  And they have.

I am one of those users who came in after the new Merit system and understand the pros and cons of the system. The new system will definitely do wonders for bettering the forum in terms of shit post and signature spams.

The only bone of contention comes from users that were airdropped the merits on the basis of their existing rank. They are the only people in my opinion who would still be posting sig spam. They had not earned those merits and what the forum can do is that they can have the airdropped merits removed now because we have had ample time to earn merits by posting quality posts and proving our initially held rank. Why give them a favour of having a Legendary/Hero rank and qualifying for highly paid signature campaigns without earning the right by getting merits through their posts? Or we can reduce their airdropped merits in some proportion that can be calculated by using the current post/merit earned of that user. This would ensure that their previous effort (when meriting a post was not so prevalent) is duely appreciated in merit calculation.

Introducing Merit was a good step. The amount of spamming we used to see in the later 2017 to early 2018, it was ridiculous. I can not speak very correctly since I do not have any data or I am not a data analyst but in the naked eyes, I see improvement. There are a lot of members still ranking up.


Have not thought about it. Think is if you have a goal to contribute to the community then nothing else comes in the equations. I understand that not everyone has the same goal.

This thread plays as a reminder for all forum members, especially shit posters, whom have kept continuously to post their shitpost daily.
This thread is for old-era members, and for new-era members whom joined here after merit system kicked-off.
Nearly a month later, merit system released
Merit & new rank requirements
Around 2 weeks later, theymos wrote

Above is reminded section on theymos' standpoints on post quality, forum situation, plans and expectation to clean up the forum by merit system.
The system born as main tool to fight against spammers; keep them unable to rank up, and reduce spam posts.

Did it help as expected? Not.

Merit system failed at somewhat extents, spammers stucked on low ranks, but they kept spamming, globally.
That is why around 8 months later, in September last year, theymos moved further by derank Junior Members whom did not earn 1 merit (at least) by that day.
After that, it seems merit system and that demotion on old-era Junior Members have significant impacts on spamming here.
Newbies stopped spamming because they can not rank up to Junior Members. It is truly right with farm accounts, but there are 'companies' that run bumping services still use their Newbie accounts to spam globally.
In Welcome message (draft), admin wrote

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Question
My question stated in thread title: Since 2018, what did you contribute to prevent signature ads removed globally?

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Solutions
Please stop or reduce considerably your spam posts. Admin actually want to keep signature and signature industry, for good users, to have extra income.
You should support admin's standpoints on post-quality and help the forum as less shitposts as possible.
Be good, be constructive, help the forum, and help yourself!