IMO, ban the paid sig ads. It's the answer to all our problems.
Really? Do you honestly believe that? Please explain, because I don't see how banning paid adverts is the answer to all this forums problems, nor will it stop spammers or trolls.
@mods:
Allowing per-post rewards for sig ads encourages spamming.
Allowing multiple accounts helps scammers.
Allowing selling of accounts - see above.
Threads like this are the result of an ill-defined & inconsistent forum policy.
This is exactly how I feel. Can we honestly refuse to ban the selling of accounts and be lax on scammers and trolls, yet paid signature deals need to be banned? There's no logic to this.
We are currently thinking about what needs to be done, we have been discussing it since the latest influx of paid advertising spammers. The question is, do we just get more strict on spammers, or do we go as far as to disallow paid advertising, or even remove signatures.
Hopefully just having more defined rules and being more strict on spammers will be enough, however no one has come to a decision on anything, those are just ideas that are being tossed around.
It's good to hear that you are looking to do something about this. I think the only way to deal with this is too try being more strict on spammers first, if it doesn't work within a certain period of time then banning them is the only option.
The staff already have enough to do without the extra work load of dealing with hundreds of spammers. So I can see the current work force struggling to keep it under control and eventually the paid signatures will have to get banned.
Get strict on spammers regardless of Paid Signature deals or not. Why is it certain members can posts nonsense continually, yet it doesn’t seem to be a problem unless they have a signature. I find that the biggest trolls on this site who post the most crap don't actually have signature deals. The majority of Prime Dice participants don't post crap either, it's just a small handful of newbs who get greedy and spoil it for everyone else. If they are threatened with a warning that if they continue posting crap they will lose their entire payment, I'm pretty sure they'll heed this.
SaltySpitoon, I know that what users say won't change much your (mods) decision but I don't think being more strict would help
This will only bring more dispute, more unhappy users and more work for mods
I think that moderation rules should be as manichean as possible: either something is allowed or it's not
Even though it's late IMO, it's good to see mods about to take decisions about this problem
Well thats kind of the thought. I think it would be preferential to allow everyone to continue doing what they are doing, and just hit the spammers harder. The problem with that is how much additional oversight it could take, which we may or may not be able to provide.
Can moderators be an accurate judge of paid advertising spamming vs regular spamming is the question. If you are spamming because you are getting paid to, that is more severe than letting your emotions get the better of you, and spamming a few posts. If we can't tell the difference easily, then cracking down on paid advertising spammers won't work, and more drastic measures would be taken, such as not allowing paid advertising in the first place.
The goal here is to allow as much freedom as possible without letting those freedoms disrupt others.
Hit the spammers harder. This is all that needs to be done.
I know people find the signatures annoying but they can always hide them.
... says the person with the 22 point red font paid advertisement in their sig.
I suggest the forums just disallow paid signature schemes altogether.
It clutters the place up too much IMO and promotes posts with little substance.
I'm also a little tired of people like you being unnecessary condescending and whining at something that shouldn’t really affect them. If you don't like signatures and argue that they should be banned, go to your profile settings and turn them off and/or ignore users you find annoying. That's you sorted. Then just let the mods deal with spammers in whatever way spammers are dealt with with or without a signature. I don't understand how if somebody is trolling and posting crap it's fine as long as they don't have a signature, but if they do then it's
OMG spammers! And
oh my eyes are blinded by PD signatures everywhere. Come on, be reasonable.
Also, out of curiosity, do you keep an eye on users with posts count/activity>10 (or 20 or even more)? I think that could help catching some spammers
I find it ridiculous when users have only been here for a month or two and they are already hitting 2000-3000 posts. I know we had a lot of spammers before the whole sig thing. But, the way they are doing it now paying per post it seems it's getting worse. Spammers are trying to hide it too. They are posting in threads which they wouldn't be interested in and don't add any value to the subject in matter. I have seen the off topic section for example be flooded with one persons name commenting on every thread. Surely, they haven't got anything to add for every single thread posted here at the forum, it's not so much they're posts are constructive because anyone can sting a few sentences together.
Again, I fall under this. Is that level of posting ridiculous? Maybe. But define ridiculous? What does it matter if somebody is making 2 posts a month or 2000 as long as it's not spam. It doesn't. Spammers will spam and trolls will continue to troll regardless of whether we ban signatures or their deals.
I'm not sure banning paid sigs will solve anything. It will just sprout in another way.
What if avatars come next? I see lots of spammer sock accounts that act as ardent defendants in specific posts/communities that would gladly wear the paid logo..
On the other hand, it is a given that spammers do make themselves notice. It's not like you can spam "on the low".
We all see them and know them. I don't know how much more work it could really amount to. It's just a matter of harsher policy imho.
This
will happen. People will then start selling their little 'Personal Text' thing, and whenever avatars come back I'm sure they will be sold per posts or on a rented basis. People will probably also sell accounts with domain nanes in and offer to make 2000 posts a month for a payout etc.
I'd hope that the first step is putting the smackdown on those who abuse paid signatures, if that doesn't work, then disallowing paid signatures, if that doesn't work, remove signatures all together. Hopefully they would stop with just more smacking.
Again, this is all that needs to be done. Stunna seems to be a pretty reasonable guy and I've personally seen him refuse payout for people who have not met his terms, and he has publicly stated that if you make him aware of people who are gaming the system he will refuse payout. Just make sure all the Signature Deal providers are aware that it is potentially becoming a nuisance and warn them to become more stricter and to enforce their rules tighter. This should hopefully work. Mods don't need to do any extra work, just deal with spammers as you normally deal with them.
Excuse me ? Are you or are you not complaining about having an account banned that was involved in .sig space advertising ?
Do you believe it reasonable to have multiple accounts to use for multiple payouts from various .sig space advertising offers ?
Do you believe it's reasonable to have multiple accounts for any reason? According to the rules its ok. It's also apparently ok to have several accounts to (try) sell, so multiple posting accounts should be of least concern as long as they're not spamming. I can't comment on the user above who was banned as his posts were obviously deleted so I'm unaware of their content.
. This is one of my problems though, it seems you can troll and spam as much as you want, only providing you don't have a paid signature. Hey, at least none of us are scamming because it would be unprofitable to do so 
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