Topic: Spamming way of creating threads (Read 559 times)

With the issue with user HumanityWhole haven't been extensively discussed, it is our hope not to see the likes of this posting pattern that centers on advertising a blog site with little or no interest in some active discussion and participation on the bitcointalk forum and posts that are done within minutes interval in a way that it raises concerns. Be that as it may, haven't handled this issue following rule/guideline 24. as interpreted by a forum staff @Welsh, we have avail to us a way of tackling and referencing future occurances.

In that regard, I ca say the thread has archived its aim and would like to hacken to the call of The Cryptovator
and would be locking this thread in 24hours. In the meantime, I give room to any further notations on the case.

Edited: It's 24hours gone so, I guess  I'll have to proceed and lock the thread. Let's keep the forum safe and clean. Nice one guys!

Seems spammer has been nuked. Thanks for helping clean the forum. For the next time, you may use simply the report button and request moderators to check his post history in the comment section. So moderators will check and take appropriate action. Or you may directly DM the Global moderators to take immediate action, especially in this type of case where OP tries to promote something.

You may lock 🔐  the topic now since it has been solved.

Right, the account wasn't nuked for the type of content being posted, i.e what others might consider as a load of rubbish, it was more about the way they were doing it. Advertising, and then spamming a number of threads in close succession, with the sole aim to advertise. I didn't have a problem with the topics at hand, from a moderation point of view.

I do think these types of topics create a divide in the community, based on the believability factor, absolutely wasn't taken into consideration when the threads were first removed or when the account was finally nuked. 

To be very honest, we have sections like off-topic and Politics & Society where we can discuss this stuff while remaining on the bitcoin forum.
If the OP had only one thread, i am sure no one would have deleted that topic and there would have been people replying to the OP. However, since he was spamming his links by creating multiple similar threads, he got nuked with all his threads deleted.

I am not sure what kind of posts and quality content you can generate in threads that discuss ways to become a god or reptilian, or his nonsense tips about immortality and the other types of unnecessary noise he was creating. Anyone discussing such things and relying on those posts to remain on a Bitcoin forum shouldn't be surprised if they notice plenty of post deletions. 

It will be easy to spot that alt account as that account will be using the same domain name url in his post, so there is zero chance for him to continue his spam actions again.

Luckily in those deleted threads, no one posted or replied as usually it is unfair for those posters who post good in those threads but later found out that the whole thread is gone along with their posts.

I honestly didn't know that. You live and learn I guess. The feature in the Personal Message Options only says "Allow newbies to send you PMs." I think theymos could have written it more clearly so everyone knows that if you tick the option, newbies won't be able to PM you, but you will also not be able to PM any newbies. You only get the complete picture if you read the thread he wrote.

Good call! If he isn't a bot, maybe we will see a complaint from the user in Meta soon. We haven't had one of those in a while. 

Yeah, nuked. Thought I was more than fair, removed the threads, gave them a warning via PM, however it's quite evident they don't want to contribute, but simply want to use  the forum as a place to advertise. Anyway, I expect we'll see a alt account in the coming days to post, so if seen just report them.

I do believe removal of a thread, doesn't actually give you a notice via your personal messages. Although, I messaged them personally. So, they should have got the warning regardless. Who knows, they might just be using automation to post these articles.

You are right. The problem of the spammer discussed here is not merit. Though I am not a fan of politics and society board. But that's not a board that gives out many merits. The first time I visited that board I understood that it was too vast. Infact some topics that ought to be off topic makes P&S board their aboard. It is just the posts of the old members of this forum that keeps the board valuable till date.


Can you explain to me how creating numerous topics in one account will give the alt account post quota?
Meanwhile, if it's about this topic, the spammer was promoting his off forum site and that is why he doesn't forget to link all his topics to the website

This is how newbies try to fish some merits because they think once they open up a topic many members will give some merits to the topic they open up here. So for this its better to report it to moderator for them to asses this kind of action they made.

That is not correct Pmalek, look at Theymos' post on it:
If you opt out of Newbies sending you PM's, then you can't also send them PM's.

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This is why you are getting that message:

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So if you want to PM this user, you have to opt in to receive PM's from newbies, otherwise you cannot. Check the thread: Newbie Pm opt-in

Perhaps there might have been a settings but, am sure its not from my end, it must have come by default as I've not tried using any of those functions before and my prior knowledge of the forum leaves me with the idea that newbies aren't allowed to send pm to ranked users and I think that accounts for this:


I don't know if you could see this but it reads:

Following is recent display of laxity to warnings, it shows hes not paying attention to whatever is going on here and ought to be called to order using means that even him or her can't resist. It's so uncool!

He is at it again. This morning he created another copy-pasted thread from his shitwhole blog. https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/--5404097
He obviously doesn't want to stop and it could be time to start looking at a temporary ban or just nuke him altogether. Bitcointalk is obviously his advertisement platform. This person isn't interested in contributing to the forum in any way. 

Right, I know that and check it regularly as I've reported it to the mod. But since HumanityWhole is still doing it since all previous posts were deleted then I think further action has been taken by the mod ^{[temporary ban likely].} If so, only mods will know.

All messages sent to his inbox will tell him why all the posts were deleted. So no special effort is needed for it. 

There is no such option in the profile settings. You can only allow or disallow newbies to send you PMs, but that doesn't affect your permissions to PM them. If your settings don't allow newbies to PM you, you can still PM them. Each user can customize their own ignore list though, which allows you to add any user whose PMs you don't want to receive. I don't know why that user would add you to his ignore list if you never interacted with each other before.

I agree with you @Pmalek. Comparing LoyceV to this fellow is just something inconceivable. Like,  LoyceV, for real? I don't know how you come up with that but, it goes beyond having threads on display in the Meta. Meta speaks about improvements on the forum amongst
others and most of LoyceV's thread does just that. Making comparison and speculative data on individuals/groups alike and these have proven useful in many aspects to a lot of users on the forum. Most of all, these aren't a days job neither do they seek traffic for its site.
The case is different for HumanityWhole as without any bias on my side, he's clearly off the part feeling super human already, don't care if the threads are getting responses and seeks to generate traffic on blogs site, off the forum!

I think that's fair as one could be and I most say, I like the serenity of his profile, lol. Anyway, I tried sending out a PM so the user could understand what is at play and perhaps bring his or her attention to this thread but, forum default system doesn't allow PM between newbies and ranked members.

Welsh have done the most and let's hope the user understands enough to fall in line.

I think I'm being fair maybe overly so, I've removed the threads again, in the end there was 6 by the time I logged back on. Then, I've messaged them with a link to the guidelines, and a brief message about what's happened i.e thread removal, and specifically why.

See what happens from here on out.

I don't think those two are comparable. LoyceV makes a lot of effort in the threads and services he creates and runs for free, while that Humanity dude (or whatever) creates nothing of importance. Unless you feel Bitcointalk is the place to talk about reptilian Gods or the top 5 ways to turn your life around to become the overlord. Take a look at the most recent copy-pasted nonsense for today. He will be temp banned pretty soon.

That's good if other threads of this user has been deleted but it's more good if he stop doing such useless topic in Politcal and society. Not just him/her doing such trash Thread but also many user out there. Maybe he came to the forum without reading the rules and regulations that's why this will happen. But he need to stop this in order to prevent perma immanent or temporary banned here in forum. For now let's help to our moderators lets report this kind of users.

Simply reported these guys and thats it. Cant stop creating multiple boards unless those users got reported and mods take a ban hammer on them termporary or depends on the gravity of spamming. Since its in the official rule can easily banned them. But its gonna be worthless since they can just create a new account after that.

Probably he will just create new one and do it again. So I think there should be an alternative solution to it that might help in decreasing spammers. (of course reporting but Im thinking an extensive one limiting those users or restricting their post allowed something like that, depends on rank or level of their posting and contribution).

42 posts of "HumanityWhole" has been deleted by mods till now (Source https://bpip.org/Profile?id=3483526 ), however, he has made four new threads today repeating the same pattern with his site link in each of those four threads. Either someone needs to tell him whats wrong he is doing (if he is not aware of the rules) or a temp ban should be an eye-opener for him. I don't think he will be getting a lot of traffic by this act of spamming.

The key difference with this case; is they aren't directly copying the content from their website, and pasting it here. Whereas, the quoted user above was doing exactly that, then providing the source, but the intention of posting was mainly for the purpose of advertising since they're obviously related to the site. There was no additional content or thoughts or anything. Copy contents of website, paste, probably never return back to the thread, and instead copy another of their articles, and repeat.

So, as per the guideline I quoted above; one would be deemed substantial, as well as useful.  While, the other doesn't quite qualify under that for me, due to the nature of how it was posted i.e directly copying it without anything else, intentions etc. I guess someone could argue that it was somewhat substantial, due to it not being low quality on its own, but the nature of how it was taken, and putting on here is what makes it rather unsubstantial to me. When you combine all the things together, including the amount of threads that were created in a small period of time, I think there's a clear difference between them.

I do think it's generally good practice to keep somewhat related threads into one though. So, I do get your point there, and is somewhat enforced, especially when you look at marketplace threads involving similar or the same items/services.

You could make the same argument about LoyceV in the Meta section and pushing his statistics site on users here.  One might think there doesn't need to be a different topic for every single statistic listed on the site, but who really cares if people want to merit hunt by making lots of threads.  If people want to spam threads I don't think there's any rules against it.  At some point if it bothers people they will just hit the ignore button.  I only wish this site had better block options, where when you blocked someone they aren't able to see your posts and vice versa, instead of them just being ignored and greyed out.  

Everything I deemed as advertising, which was everything as the link was always included. Plus, they didn't have many if any posts actually interacting after posting the threads. I can only nuke, and therefore deciding against that, since I thought a temporary ban would likely be better. That's up to the globals/admins though. They might deem the removal of the posts, enough of a warning. If the user continues, I'd say report it, and further action will likely be taken.

In this case, it was clear to me that the user was posting these articles for the sole purpose of advertising their site. They were sprung around the forum, not only Politics, and society. They rarely if ever contributed back to the discussion. They were also all posted within a short period of time, even ones that were made several days ago, were all bunched up within a few hours of each other if I recall correctly, at the very least the same day.

However, just to be clear; when you say referral, referrals usually mean in terms of interneting (that's a word, right?), a referral that someone earns from, probably better described as a affiliate link. That wouldn't be allowed, unless specific conditions were met. However, when a site posts a tracking link (which could be confused with a referral link, as they're effectively the same) to their own site, for them to track how many visitors they receive specifically from their Bitcointalk thread, that's generally okay. However, not for everything thread, as that's advertisement spam. Usually, this method is seen on announcement threads, as it does make sense there.

It's probably the most difficult section to moderate. Not because of the sheer amount of spam, but the fact you're going to piss users off no matter what stance you take. There's going to be complaints made, and ultimately it's going to be a difficult job picking out what's spam, and what's isn't. Personally, and I know this is going to be seen as detrimental to a lot of users there, but most things should be left, as long as there's some sort of discussion. However, there needs to be substance, and I'm not saying correct substance, but a explanation or reason to believe what they're posting. You know, if someone posts "god is great", and that's all, that to me is spam. However, that would likely be argued as censorship by some, but its really not. You need someone to be objective, without any sort of bias at all. So, really they shouldn't care what the person is saying, but rather if it's substantial enough.

That's ultimately why the P&S section has struggled over the years I'd say. It's a great section, some proper good posters there, and some of the most interesting discussions are had there, that comes with some big personalities, with some absolutely crazy stances, but you need someone to be able to separate that craziness, and apply objective based moderating.

Also, due to the nature of the discussions; there's plenty of drama there. The ideal candidate probably isn't someone that routinely gets involved with discussion honestly so they don't build up these subconscious feelings towards users that they've gotten into debates with which effects how they moderate.

theymos has his work cut out for him with that section .

So you've deleted everything? The profile looks clean now.
I also want to know is it worth it for that user to get a temporary ban or permanent ban once the main purpose of posting the link is known?

After the mod decides to delete all threads created by HumanityWhole, then I can think that it implies that the mod can apply its interpretation to remove everything if ^{[user posts his blog link solely to increase visitors].} So obviously it's a rule violation that results in a low value spam thread. IMO

Nope:

If the user was talking about these sorts of things without advertising their site, it would be a little better. Obviously, not to the amount they're posting per day. I removed several that was posted within a 24 hour period. So, for anyone wondering, the threads weren't removed because of the subject at hand, but rather the way it was done i.e using Bitcointalk as a place to advertise their blog, and pretty much using the Politics, and Society section as their own personal blogging channel.

I know they've used it as sort of "oh look: source", but my interpretation that doesn't mean you can spam, for the sole intent of getting visitors on your site. In reality, these sort of posts are probably touching upon a few of the guidelines, but I generally believe guidelines 24, is the best example case here.

There is no surefire solution to get the mod to ban him from posting reference links to his blog while there are thousands of other users posting random links on forums safely. I'll probably ask the mod to review that user's posting activity at this point as it's very likely that the user has violated one of the rules on the unofficial list.


Report sended:

Spamming of referral links around the forum would definitely be breaking No. 4 of the unofficial rules.
That may not apply here as the user is not sharing referral links, but rather backlinks to their website (I assume both the profile and the website are affiliated, judging from the name).

This still borders on spamming in my opinion; as the user is recklessly creating threads to try and increase the traffic to their website.

The user is not even directly involved in the discussion in the thread he creates. 34/35 posts created are threads and that's his way of attracting traffic to the blog site he refers to (probably his). I would say the report to moderator button still works fine right? So that's the solution now.

But in this case, I really want to know if someone who 100% posts a referral link on this forum as a real effort to increase the traffic of his site or personal blog is not breaking the rules? I may have forgotten something.

Like a few users have stated, reporting to moderators might be the best way to go about determining if the posts is of any value at ll or not. Although, I felt with the no response on most of the threads created so far by this user, he ought to have realise how his post is received by the community and maybe develop a better approach to create posts that would b engaging. It would help the user even up to the blog site and not leveraging the Unofficial rule of the forum just to see how it would go. There might not be rules as to how frequent a user might create threads but, users should create threads that they are really interested in discussing and not just post with the intent of living it there. OP just wants to gain clicks on his links and not discuss as the case is should have been with threads created on the forum.

It's surprising that a much pronounced board like Politics and Society comes without a moderator. If gambling board could have one, I suppose the P&H should have one too. I see that the rules to this board was crated by Flying Hellfish and possibly its moderation but the user haven't been active for almost a year. I wonder if the user is still with us and could this be the reason for the neglecton the board? Something ought to be done.

Well, if a member has too much knowledge they wouldn't start too many topics within the span of few days, if a knowledgeable member starts a topic, there is usually engagements in that thread, and the OP too will be involved in the discussion, and surely wouldn't even have time to start another thread in the same day or next, not to talk of over 10 more as in the case of this member. Have you looked at those topics, there is nothing to learn from any one of them.
Maybe you should go through them again, here are snippets from some of the threads in the first page, you should also know that the threads in themselves are as bad as these snippets:

If you create many informative threads like Ratimov, no one will complain. It is supported by community, not protested.

That user is different and can not compare with Ratimov. Creating so many topics with zero or low value, the forum does not accept shit posts or shit topics. You can create any thread that has zero or low value. Moderators will move it to trash bin. You can do it with your report rights and show the power of community.

Well, I don't see how too much knowledge (so to say) can kill anyone. If the OP feels he has a truckload of topics to download from their medulla oblongata, so be it. We are all here to learn. I checked, briefly though, some of the topics by the user. They aren't that bad for discussion. It's just that users don't find them interesting to engage them for the time being. My initial worry was if the user in question was a plagiarist. However, that's not the case as articles used are properly referenced by the user. Yes, I agree that some of the topics are quite abstract but that doesn't qualify them as spamming. Perhaps, the user should have delayed in pushing out those topics almost same time. They should've spaced them weekly.

Most of the signature campaigns do not pay that board, and spamming in this way is easy to discover, meaning instead of creating several topics, why not do some spam responses in topics that have more than 100 responses.

In general, he may deserve a temporary ban for 7 days, with a tightening of the ban if the matter is repeated.

I don't visit that board so try to contacting one of Global mods

If it was another board, I would say that it makes sense to use the "report to moderator" button, but it seems that there are other rules in P&S and that a lot of things are allowed there that are not in other parts of the forum. Until that board gets its moderator it seems like we’re going to have to put up with things like this, or just put that board on ignore and not bother too much with politics.

I don't think that is the case here BlackHatCoiner, HumanityWhole has around 11 threads on the first page of the politics and society board, and all of the threads have no replies from other members, but just one or so.
There is no moderator particularly dedicated to P&S.

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Maybe the P&S section needs a dedicated moderator, otherwise there will be no end to spam and zero value posts and threads in that section, suchmoon complained about a similar posting habit of another member in this thread, but i don't think anything has been done till this time. If member's make legitimate complaints like this and nothing happens, then that is only an encouragement for more spammers and surely they will increase. HumanityWhole is only here to advertise his off-forum site and not to discuss bitcoin or anything, if not, how then can you explain a member with thread after thread and with no engagement in them, yet he opens more and concludes them all with a link to his site.

Politics and Society is seen as full of spam and low quality posts, so I expect that many have it ignored; I also expect that those posts fit just well into ... that, no matter how pointless they are.
However, as said, hit the report button and let the mods decide. Reporting posts is not meant to be overly accurate anyway.

As far as I know there are no limit to set unless you have a newbie jail. A user can make as many posts as they want and create as many topics as they want. That's not a problem. If you find something zero value, something that is spam immediately report it to the moderator. The moderators have a level of tolerance before they give the user a warning if not ban him. Few warnings without being changing the old habit then he will be banned today or tomorrow.

From the very first rule of the unofficial list of rules,

"Low value, pointless or uninteresting posts" is a little subjective, though. Our best course is to report them.

Yes, but it could also be an alt account, to begin discussion about a topic that's supposedly interesting, to help fulfilling the post quota. Do we know if there's moderation in P&S?

Hi meta

I discovered this user HumanityWhole that seems to be rather more frequent on the Politics and Society board. Apparently this user seems to own a blog site which I don't want to reference to avoid promotion of the site as I think that's part of his or her intent for chosen post pattern but, the user tends to create more topic than necessary. Talking about abstract things, infinite existence, immortality and lots more. Just imagine what his doing to the Politics and Society board!


Is this allowed?

How can a single individual have over 12 threads on a single page that is supposed to hold a total of 38 threads and most of this posts are pasted on the forum the same day (within the range of 3 days). User gives no concern to contributions on the subject as to other users contributions and even with almost zero(0) replis on most of them, the user continues to create more threads. Perhaps, the intent is just to get clicks on referenced links.

It's one way to promote spam if you ask me and somehow, user tends to be the host. Although, due to its abstract nature, its not getting much attention but, that might not be for long.
I explained my displeasure in one, only to note several others.
Perhaps it's some new way to do some cheap click advertising. What's your take on this?