Topic: Those who rent out signature space---Unite! - page 2. (Read 3987 times)

Armed, you're missing the point here.  It's not about choosing a reputable campaign or overlooking things which are too good to be true.  This is about sticking together when a campaign advertizer tries to screw some contractees but not others.  Take a look at what happened in the xbtec thread, when some of the members with visible trust gave negative feedback, the problem was resolved for all the others within hours.  Note that those guys that gave the visible feedback had been paid themselves, but they put the negative feedback as a sort of solidarity with the others who had been screwed.

But why is it so hard to just go with a reputable campaign instead of a new one that promises ridiculously high rates? If the offer is too good to be true - then it is exactly that.

well, at least xbtec paid out... updown still a mess. it's being discontinued, right?

That's still a union IMO, what you're suggesting.  I have no problem with that.  I think that we should just continue what we have now; everyone is free to decide which campaign to join, they should judge it themselves.  If that campaign does not payout, you leave negative feedback, and you take off the signature.  Isn't that what you're suggesting?  If so, don't we already have that now?

Also, if an advertiser wanted to scam, everyone removing their signatures would just encourage the advertiser to run faster.

I do what I always do, trying to help out. And if I can help you guys out with my signature, I will.

I think it's very good that I may retain my signature from FastBluff. Definitely 10 points for them.

For sure, but to be clear, those people are mainly trying to scam the advertizer.  Everyone has a responsibility to evaluate anyone's claims for him/herself.  If someone isn't deserving of payment, I think that's a pretty important topic to bring up in this context.  When, exactly, is someone not deserving of payment?  Obviously this will be dependent on the conditions of the particular campaign.  Where I think this "informal union" may be of use is driving advertizers to be specific about those conditions beforehand.  That is, if our culture is strong, we won't just throw a signature on willy-nilly, but instead we'll say to the advertizer.  First, you need to clearly:

1) lay out the conditions of the campaign (what posts count, in what subfora, etc)
2) lay out the conditions of payment (what day, for what term, who does the counting, should pms be sent)
etc  ...?

This is what this discussion should be about.  What sorts of conditions should a campaign be run under?  What is fair for both advertizers and their contractees?

That informal union should be aware that people will try to scam you.
People don't paid due to spamming will act like they are victmin, people that change signature in the middle of the month and don't get paid will make the same. So you'll need at leas the same level of verification of posts and signatures as the campaigns do.

Geez, I keep having to reiterate that I am not trying to form a union.  For the record then:

I am not organizing a union.

I am talking about acceptable/unacceptable practices by advertizers and how to avoid them/how they can be nipped in the bud.  I think this has to do with the kind of action that bitcoininformation is taking.  He's making a statement about an advertizer who has not paid all his contractees even though he himself was paid.

Noboday said that getting paid to post is a right.  But if I make a contract with someone to pay me to bear their advertizement, if they default on that contract that is a serious matter.  IMHO, it's the greed of others when people don't stick together that allows campaigns to get away with this stuff.  Note that before up/down went away for a month, he already had failed to pay a certain subset of his contractees during the weekly rounds.  However, because of greed, people continued to bear his signature and he got away with stolen advertizing and broken contracts for another month.

Please folks, I want to talk about what we expect from advertizers who want to rent space, I don't want to officially organize you into a union.  I want to promote a culture of honesty and comaradery.  See my earlier post with concrete suggestions about the conditions under which contracts should be made and what people should do when those conditions aren't met.  Note again that this is my opinion about what people should do.  I cannot force anyone to do anything nor would I want to.

monbux, I think he's saying that he's not suggesting a union.  I read the thread and tspacepilot says at least 4 or 5 times that he's not trying to make a union/anything mandatory.

You are suggesting.. a union?  Dude, this is a forum.  We should really be taking getting paid per post as a privilege, not a right. 
A union would be very hard to organize, and it'll just promote greed.

I think what I'm suggesting at this point is much more informal than any official union.  However, you're right that it's the spirit of solidarity and looking out for each other that I'm trying to promote.  I suggest that and injury to one is and injury to all and that if we stick together to demand good treatment and professional contracts from the advertizers that overall the marketplace will be healthier and will thrive.

Make a labor union of signature renters? I doubt it would work. There are few trusted signature campaigns, only one or two open, and no qualification needed to join the market. Plus lots of greedy and dumbness from many people to make collective movements works.

Maybe in the future, if we get more advertisers, and with more bitcoins business. Maybe...

That's very cool, bitcoininformation, this is essentially the kind of solidarity that I'm trying to promote!  I think you're setting a very good trend with this.

I got paid correctly, but I do not agree with his actions (even though I defended him for a while). So I decided to leave his campaign and change my signature to reflect my opinion about it. 

Yes, I have joined another signature campaign, but they allowed me to keep that message (which is the one of my main reason that I joined them).

No, no, I wouldn't ever want to try to get anything "mandatory" going on.  I'm simply talking about the culture. Note the message that bitcoininformation has on his profile now (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/overview-of-bitcointalk-signature-ad-campaigns-last-update-01-jan-23-615953).  That's the kind of action I'm talking about.  I don't know if bitcoininformation was one of those who was done wrong or not.

Great in concept but I suspect this would be about as easy as convincing the bitcoin core developers to change bitcoin's PoW mechanism.  Only way something like this could possibly work in my opinion is if all participants 'pool' their collective payouts and agree to evenly dispurse said funds amongst all existing members (essentially spreading the loss out amongst many).  Mandatory membership!  Won't happen.

I understand this point, but I think it detracts from the issue.  Whether or not this is "work" may be debatable, but it's clear that it is a contract.  A failure to fulfill contracts is the relevant context, I believe.


I suggest coming up with a set of "best practices" or "community guidelines" or whatever you want to call them.  Essentially, I want to help engender a culture whereby advertizers know that if they mistreat even a few of their ad-bearers, all of the adbearers will drop the ad until things are fixed.  I note that in the case of Up/Down there were issues even back when he was doing things weekly.  If people had stuck together in that moment and dropped the advert together, this fracas of a month of free advertizing would have never happened.

And, to address your second point, I know that if I had worn an up/down signature all month last month, I would have text that says: "the following website is currently in arrears on payment to contractors, visiting this site is not advised" just above the updown ad.  Ideally, all the updown campaigners would join and this would put more pressure on updown to resolve the situation sooner (I believe).



I've heard no bad reports from Stunna's advertizers.  I just joined the campaign myself.  This thread is to talk about what kinds of things campaigners can do to support each other when campaigners are not so upstanding.

I got paid by Luckybit just now. Decent outfit (made .05 BTC). I think I'm going to make my signature a referral link to see how that works until I'm a Full member at least, just to see how that works compared to Luckybit.

so having a record of previous payouts and being a gold member of bitcoin foundation is not reputable enough?

scammers will scam anyway, no matter how reputable they might have been in the past.

the only way to stop it is by organizing and forming a team against them to show them they can't get away with it.

Stunna this is not against you, is  against uptown and bad sig owners. you dont have to worry about this unite act,  your golden already so need to worry

Zimmah awesome IMAO

Also im going to put his website on scammer sites listed so people can stay away so you uptown have 10 more hours, I will give links to the site so you can guys can report him there too.  Not gonna allow this op to take advantage of any of us.