Topic: Spam Sections - page 3. (Read 1000 times)

Why not both?

Create self-moderated threads in order to propagate the board with real discussion.
Force spammers to be binned into useless threads or to start them and then now you have fish in a barrel.
Wipe the thread or wipe their posts: either way, you're lifting the board of its spam.

Altcoin Discussion and Bitcoin Discussion are both spam sections because most of the topics are just repetitive. After creating a unique topic, it will have another version by next week and most of it doesn't have any complexity so people will try and give common replies even they lack the knowledge required to post on that specific topic.

As we can see, most of the sig spammers are posting in Altcoin Discussion than Bitcoin Discussion and many topics on it can be answerable by a normal person. We should be more intellectual on replying to threads because we're advanced and we are here in a big community that has a lot of information. It's such a disgrace if they're here for a long time and still making dumb posts. This is also the reason why some people choose Reddit to discuss some important topics because the statements are very considerable.


Agree to this, you can avoid spam replies by making it in self-moderation.
But the real cause here are the sig-spammers, they're the one who makes shitposts on the abovementioned threads.

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The only solution, for now, is to report them, moderation isn't quite effective if you really want to dissolve shitposting because they will just avoid those moderated topics and post to the other threads. Remember, they're sig spammers who will post everywhere just to complete their task and earn bounty, it's really hard to stop them.

It's not that bad, but it still is quite bad. As opposed to the 99% spam threads in Altcoin Discussion, you have somewhere around 65-80% spam in that section. Trading Discussion is more or less the same in that regard. Speculation would be somewhere around 50%.

The natural enemy of the spammer, the elusive moderator.

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I don't like excusing things because of a minority of contradictory instances. There is an invisible "generally" prior all statements, including this one. I won't say that you can't find genuine threads, but they are always overtaken by spammers or slammed down three pages deep when all the spam threads bubble back up.

I don't really think economics is that bad, I post there rarely, and sometimes come across ok-ish discussions, topics by Hydrogen and O_e_l_e_o's arguments are really indepth and interesting to look into. Other than that, its usually a shitshow of people having ~0 knowledge in theoretical economics.

Speculation has surprisingly good discussions occasionally, but that's only because of those fucking magical Wall Observer thread-bastards, they strive hard for real.

I think the spam would be genuinely reduced if there's just like a little more mods or patrollers around than what there currently are.

Bitcoin and Altcoin Discussion especially, and it's probably because a lot of sig spammers know they can post garbage there without having their posts deleted by mods--and it's true, because there are so many shitposts in those sections.

The gambling sections seem to attract people who are genuinely interested in gambling topics, but there's still a lot of spam last I checked.  There are a lot of members who can't write proper English but who persist in trying anyway, and the result is a mess.  Not sure about Trading Discussion.  I think there's a lot less spam there (in a relative sense), but it's still pretty bad as far as I know.

This has all been discussed ad nauseum, and it's pretty common knowledge how bad the situation is.  Theymos doesn't want to censor members, and I think that's why the problem has persisted.  But hey, at least we got the merit system and the requirement for 1 merit to rank up to Jr. Member.  That put a huge damper on account farming and the ability to earn money by shitposting.  Those actions didn't solve the problem, but they helped.

It's what people do. People often use blanket statements to be more effective in the way their words are perceived. It's alright saying "there are good posts there but the majority of it is spam" when "Altcoin Discussion is a spam section" has a much more active, and aggressive way of saying it. It's all about impact. Obviously, there's some really good discussion in every section of this forum about various different things.

You are correct in that, actually. While seeking out high-profile spammers, I found that Bitcoin Discussion has been flushed of the majority of the spam. The same can be said of SOME of Economics and Speculation. Strangely enough, Speculation is kind of better than Economics in terms of quality. You'll find more genuine discussion than the drab "Differences between an investor and common man!" and "Who is the richest person?" kind of threads.

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The worst board is Altcoin discussion by far, with Economics and Trading Discussion are probably next in line.

Off-topic is still a creature to be tamed because uninteresting threads with uninteresting one-liners should be deleted, but uninteresting threads with interesting replies should be kept. The problem is when we have crappy threads like "What's your favorite movie?" and you can't find a single response that adds to anything. A simple answer->explanation would make the posts worth reading. Unfortunately, there are too many posts that just write down some random movie title and drop off. What's the point?

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Posting in bitcoin discussion board require any rank criteria? I don't think so.

I can only see better moderation made less spam posts particularly less spam threads on Bitcoin discussion so I said other boards also need that kind of moderation level.

I have made self-moderated threads in spam sections before. Surprise surprise, look at the users that don't show up. After all, what is a forum designed for? Discussion? Pfft!

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I was going to make a proposal to create more self-modded threads (and a 2nd post "trash bin" for transparency) in order to return the spam boards back to reality. Unfortunately, all that spam has corroded my brain and I'm not exactly sure what would be an interesting-enough discussion to start.

It's not really that bad.
Spammers avoid moderated topics, especially if the OP is an old user.

They know their shitposts are going to be deleted and that would simply make them waste time and not get paid at the end of the week.

The kids in your example do that for their own fun or just because they are jerks, them trashing something takes a few seconds, for posters here is all about the money. Wasting their precious time on a post and have it deleted is going to hurt them, unlike the teenagers who won't lose anything when their garbage is cleaned up.

Hmm, we could actually have an experiment with this
I'm betting on a 1 to 5 ratio at least.

To me the spam sections are those sub boards where you can get away with making low value posts in large volume. Gambling Discussion is the main one to me because people are just discussing sports and you can make a lot of posts in there that don't require any technical knowledge of bitcoin. Many signature campaigns are also gambling based ones and they seem to understandably require a certain amount of posts in the gambling sections and that will obviously fuel the fire. Off topic used to be the biggest abused one imo but since most campaigns don't pay for posts in there and with the invention of the merit system posting in there is probably mostly useless other than for post count so users go elsewhere and Gambling Discussing is probably far easier to abuse and get paid for it.


A self-modded thread would be a nightmare. It would be like being an unpaid janitor of a school of unruly and illiterate kids. No thanks. It would take far too much time and from my understanding of the rules people can just create an unmoderated one if they wanted to.

It depends on what you consider to be spam (apart from the obvious). Every section is affected one way or the other although the spam level on some board are more obvious that's why they get tagged as spam section by majority. From my judgement of what spam are, I'll say this boards; beginner & help and serious discussion have also been affected lately.  Even the technical discussion and support section that many feel to be clean off spam isn't although theirs aren't as obvious as others.

The fact altcoin or gambling boards are tagged spams doesn't mean we should take discussion that fate more in those sections to other boards. Preferable you create your topic and enable the self moderation feature to keep the thread clean off spammers or report spam posts to moderators for section which those feature aren't enable.

Its not about the effort to create the self moderated thread but it more relates to the requirement for a new self moderated thread.
I need to know about the

Odds of the upcoming cricket match,
Need to know if any particular gambling site offer is worth investing
Why bitcoin price pump 1000$ in a day
best service alternative to paypal
when is the hardfork of the coin
why people are not using bitcoin in my country

and many others things for which i do not need to create self mod thread and can discuss them in the existing threads.

You do not have to always create a self moderated thread, what was suggested was simply measures you can take to curb spam attack on your thread or topic immediately without waiting for a moderator to act upon your report of a spammy reply/replies

Create a self mod thread, if you want to keep things a hundred percent "civil" on your topic as you can easily truncate/remove irrelevant replies and on your threads or topics anywhere around the forum that aren't self moderated, then always report spam posts/replies to the moderators, they'll act on it.

Why not? Creating a self-moderated thread does not require more work than creating a regular thread.
In the end, you still decide how much work you want to put into moderating it.

On most ANN threads, you still run the risk of not getting your question seen, precisely for the reason you've mentioned yourself (spammy replies in between).
Plus, you're potentially losing a bit of outside input from people who are not affiliated with the project in question.

Any board where you are stating your opinion and not facts tends to have more spam than those that require a very specific post.
Topics in the gambling sections are about your favorite casinos, gambling system, stories of big wins and losses and topics were there is no right or wrong answer. Therefore there are many spam posts and repeated answers.

Boards like Technical Support are strict and you cant spam there as the problems and discussions there are very specific.
If a user requires help to setup his hardware wallet your post needs to be about how to do that in a proper way. If you try to spam that thread about your top 5 hardware wallets and how cool they are, your post will be deleted.

The advises mentioned by you are not easy to implement. I cannot create a self moderation thread on my every query / discussion. If i want to discuss or get update on any altcoin project, i do go to its ANN thread and visit the last few pages to get update on what's going on that project despite the fact that there are spammy posts too in between.

The Altcoin Discussion board is definitely a great place to get your report statistics up
There sometimes are some interesting topics there, but in my experience, most of the in-depth, interesting topics get buried too quickly due to all the spam topics people tend to reply on.

I've suggested a couple of times that Altcoin Discussion really needs some cleanup and/or another moderator.
Personally, I do try to post there, but none of my topics ever get any traction there. Probably because they're a bit longer than the average topic and require people to actually read and think before they reply.
Or maybe I'm just talking about coins that aren't that interesting to people...

It's a bit sad really, I think with some additional moderation, it could definitely become an interesting place for discussion.

It is incorrect.

Forum changed its rank system, with stricter requirements and good supports from merit system. It is the third biggest change of forum rank system. Read more: History of bitcointalk.org's rank system
Those changes only play as supportive hindrance and prevent spammers to rank up to higher ranks. Unfortunately, merit system and new rank requirements have no power to prevent spammers keep spamming. In some cases, spammers don't need to rank up, they just need to show their shitposts for their bumping services. This time, it is a turn of report button, and forum community to report spammers whom run bumping services.

Bitcoin discussion is not more place for spammers because I can see heavy moderation there in recent months and most of the spam threads will be deleted in few days after gets created but other section on the list needed that kind of moderation too.