Topic: This is what I call spam feeders (Read 889 times)

I checked on that and it was an April fool post although there is nothing serious there but definitely not going to work here.

Sorry for that, but I got the meaning now..

I believe most reputed members who cares about their privacy wouldn't want to jeopardized their documents passing kyc here, maybe if such people had gain enough funds all these while or were early bitcoin holders they wouldn't care if kyc is implemented or not, and if implemented they take their leave without considering any amount being paid in signature campaigns. 

Clamping down on spam means re-thinking the approach to signature campaigns (not KYC) as that is the driving factor for the vast majority to be members here. On a serious note, I suppose the saying never say never has to apply but KYC will never be implemented in the forum unless it becomes a legal requirement from the government that either the servers are based in or where the website is registered.

If KYC were to be implemented, most members will leave immediately whereas some may try to (or will) upload data that is fake or probably belongs to other people in order to keep posting for their campaign as those funds would be the only lure to keep them here.

I think you missed the sarcasm in my post:

The idea and code are in place to use.
KYC now required

If theymos wants to deploy it as a new requirement of the forum on all users, he will not need too much time for deployment. theymos did not want to do it, because his vision is toward freedom and privacy. Moreover, KYC won't stop spam.

I don't also think theymos is everly ready to implement kyc here in the forum. Maybe he can only make it more restrictive to an account found or caught regularly creating topics feeding the spammers. For real users, he has it own ways of separating them, let say reputable members like you guys can be exempted from kyc implementation only if he noticed there is no changes between the account operations.

If having an alt-account falls within the rules, some members will definitely use that opportunity for any purpose they deem appropriate but having one account per IP will not work as there are many members here that either a VPN or Tor (or both).

We all know the forum has become a magnet for account farmers that want to enrol as many of their accounts as possible across as many signature campaigns as possible in order to maximise their income and there is not much that can be done to counter that.

Though to some varying degree they suffered setbacks after some of their accounts or activities were exposed, as a community we did not get to root of the account farmers that controlled the figmentofmyass and borovichok accounts respectively. I am sure many account farmers operating on an industrial scale are replacing their tagged accounts as soon as possible in their attempt to maximise their income potential.

It is something that will not go away until/unless something drastic changes.

That'll happen right after KYC gets implemented. It won't stop spam, but it will bug real users.

Honestly, what's their goal? What could they be possibly gaining with unnecessary spam posts? I asked this question myself a dozen of times but never really got an answer. I would have understood if they/he were getting paid for posting, but he doesn't, nor is he promoting anything, nor part of any signature campaign, nor any altcoin bounty, nothing at all. Just wasting time. What are they trying to achieve here, 11 merits and 445 posts, dud! What an achievement, lol  . Some people would do anything for money, if they tell you to eat shit, he will eat shit. But for these ignored users, I can't think of any reasons at all.
 
Message to those alts: "Man, get a life, don't you have better things to do?".

I don't think theymos would do that. Well, not until the forum floods with massive spams and everything goes out of control.

It would be great if it were as you say. But you see at maximum two users; I think no more. And all the rest are their alternative accounts that moderators cannot ban because there is no direct evidence. However, their writing style is very well-defined and has many similarities. This is an example of exactly this kind of behavior when dozens of alternative accounts harm the forum, and maybe it would make sense for them to allow one account per IP.

Fortunately for me, if I recall correctly all but one of the threads I reported over the past few months for being a waste were locked. There are many patterns but the most prominent one is when a pointless or unnecessary  thread is created by possible alt-accounts and farmed accounts with the hope/expectation of receiving merits and whether that happens or not, the OP moves on to create other threads recycling the same process.

If a picture or photo ever spoke a thousand words, this really has to be it. The situation will only continue to decline unless drastic action is taken.

The OP of those topics is ignored. I like that gray font, it helps avoid wasting time on useless topics.

The gray out users are on your ignore list? I didn't realize it appears like that. I don't have that many people on my ignore list. I thought posts from ignored users simply don't show up or disappear. Like it never existed.  

It’s quite an imaginative thought, but it’s worth considering. To simplify, let’s base our judgments on the forum rules rather than personal opinions. What OP raised is a valid concern: if users keep creating excessive threads beyond normal, it exacerbates spam issues. This can become overwhelming for mods, who are outnumbered compared to the millions of forum users. Even a small percentage of active members can lead to significant problems if not managed well.

If that’s really the issue with the OP, it shouldn’t be part of the discussion here because forum rules apply to everyone, regardless of personal circumstances. After all, we are anonymous here, so we don’t know what each person is going through. Even if someone is facing challenges, it doesn’t excuse not following the rules and standards.

I could be wrong, and there could be some ulterior motive behind those who you call "spam feeders". To me, we are talking about people who unfortunately suffer from some psychological and mental problems, which have not been addressed by professionals yet. So they come to this forum in order to vent what they feel, that being the case of Fullbear2222.
It is also quite noticeable how many of the topics of these people are quite nihilistic in nature and always talk about future, politics and society in a very dark and hopeless way.

Going beyond the fact they could be affecting the quality of the content within the forum, I can only hope they get the help they need eventually and turn their life around, for the best.
It is quite interesting and disturbing, what do people with serious mental illnesses can do/say on the internet when they are not under supervision whatsoever.

Over the year you find many relatively accounts ranging from newbie/relatively new accounts to higher ranked that have done the same thing. The most prominent trait they have in common is that they (in most part) do not return to the thread after they created it and that is probably down to them not receiving any merits. They probably concluded they will not receive any merits for subsequent posts if they did not receive any for the OP.

What happens next is that signature spammers end up taking over those threads. I have reported many of those types of threads and thankfully nearly all of them were locked.

These tools are indeed a coin toss as, it doesn’t accurately relate it to a source since there are none and just use the writing style or figure of speech amongst others to arrive at a conclusion. What makes it even more difficult to accept is the fact that, all available tools aren’t agreeable and that’s why you find reports on these not being handled as would have been expected.

Something that is worth looking at though is, just how some users especially in the first case of Fullbear2222 would make 450posts and 242 of those are topics. This person is literally not interested in anything else on the forum, not even in the threads they create. There have got to be a place for these kind of users!

---

I knew I had sometime ago said something about this user and once I saw the style of write up, it clicked. I had to go dig that up and the user was already been talked about in the reputation board with some alt related suspicion.

I mean, yeah, and I get what you're saying. I guess, my objection would be that your description is how you'd like it to work: "all it does is give the user an indication of the user's post quality", but, in reality, that's not all it would do, frequently (I think) it would also mark users that people just don't like, or people that have views that many people can't tolerate, and whatnot, completely divorced from the idea of whether or not they're putting thought into their posts. I see this often with merit distribution: a lot of people seem to think they should merit posts that they agree with, and starve posts/posters of merit when they disagree. I expect the same thing would happen with any kind of "mark of shame" thing: people would get them just for posting controversial/annoying/upsetting ideas [1].

Of course, you could argue that the same thing will inevitably happen with the scheme I currently have in mind, but, the difference there is that there's no default component to it, so even if a user has made it onto a very-subscribed-to ignore list, from the point of view of someone that doesn't subscribe to that same ignore list, there'd be no outward sign that those user's posts should be taken less seriously than any other user's.

[1] I mean, that's basically what the trust system seems to often get used for. Honestly, if it were up to me, I'd completely dismantle DefaultTrust. I think it's actually caused more harm to the user base than good.

Isn't that the beauty of a glowing button? It doesn't force anything, all it does is give the user an indication of the user's post quality. And a reminder to click it when he agrees it's not worth reading.

Yep, I'm aware of that. (Only because I've bumped into posts about that accidentally; my reverse-reading of Meta hasn't got me there yet.)

I've always kind of liked the idea of giving users the tools they need to reliably keep shitposters from getting a foothold, and if this were my forum, I would totally experiment with all kinds of different schemes, but, in the end, I think most people (even the top users merit-wise) probably can't be trusted with such tools...

The thing is, if the trust system is anything to go by, then (by far) most users don't have the ability to be objective when it comes to rating each other. So, I expect any system that gives people the power to suppress other users will end up being used unfairly and for things way beyond their intended purpose.

That's why my current thinking revolves around pull mechanics rather than push mechanics. I'd like to give users the ability to basically nuke anything they don't like, but those decisions should only affect their own view of the forum, and the only mechanism for those decisions to spread and have a wider effect should be by allowing other users to voluntarily subscribe to some subset of another user's curation-related judgment calls.

Have you read about the "glowing" Ignore button? It was before my time here, and supposedly the Ignore button would become brighter once more users have the user on Ignore. I think this feature was removed because it can be abused.
It may be possible to implement it again, and base someone's Ignore power on the Merits he's earned. Kinda like how the bump power works, but maybe minus something based on how many Merits the user earned.
While typing this, I realize this works in my favour. But most of the "glow power" should come from multiple users ignoring someone.