Topic: What is the purpose of signatures? (Read 2262 times)

They are ridiculous and unnecessary,  and they're very annoying on other forums where they're not even rented out. You get someone posting just a smiley face and the post is mostly avatar and signature.   Over and over and over.   It makes threads very bloated.

However, I do support sig campaigns here IF the person is literate.   A lot aren't.

It is good for the ability to customize and express yourself. Some people use it, others don't.

That's because they wanted more visibility. Imagine what would happen if only the employees were allowed to wear clothes with a business logo. The owner would probably hire temps or pay people to pose as employees to get more visibility in the street. Paid advertising has existed before the signatures and will continue in this form or another.

The purpose of signatures is to encourage activity by forum members through the enrollment of signature campaigns.

Sigs used to be a way to reward posters for their contributions by helping them to kickstart their own websites, or to make a political statement or personal opinion. Unfortunately advertisers started to buy signatures, and posters saw this as a source of income. It all went downhill from there imho.

But wait, there's more...
Allow people with not enough money to buy a forum banner still promote their business in their personal sig space.
Offer a decent visibility for the money, a banner on one of the big Bitcoin sites would cost much more than a small forum campaign.
Campaigns popularize Bitcoin. I'm sure some of the posters came to Bitcointalk because they heard campaigns pay much better than faucets. IMO, bitcointalk campaigns are currently the easiest way to earn coins. Don't require you to own a bank account and register on an exchange (especially that some exchanges request an ID).

I don't see any negative sides. Spam is not a negative side of having the signatures! If forum did not allow to use sigs, people would spam links or PMs, or use their avatars to advertise and still get paid for it.

Some people here are selling signatures in exchange of small fee from advertisers. Whats wrong with Forum signatures? All forum softwares has their built-in forum signatures for their members. Even email has signatures too.

By the way the link I am wearing now from my signature points to my own page. This is another form of promotion. Everyday I got one to 5 clicks, see by just participating to forum discussions my site got visited?

And I am thankful for the owner of this forum for having a clean, simple forum, no ads, and also allowing us to wear our own forum signatures.

There is a *single valid reason* (that we've identified in this thread) to have, not to purchase/trade/farm accounts. I don't see anything good coming from the latter, thus will keep my ratings on such accounts. This discussion is no longer exactly related to OP.

Correct and I stand by that.

Was this not the biggest Bitcoin forum, that would be no problem at all.

Probably because two discussions in two threads tend to get mixed up. So there is a valid reason to buy or sell acounts, but they still deserve a punishment?


This would apply to sold accounts and account traders to be specific. Those where you claim that these actions result in scams and spams.


You cant fully understand the end though as there are usually side effects and I would be surprised if this is an exception. Note for clarity: this is a philosophical remark[1] and not a threat.


I impled that we leave the forum, I doubt that will be needed.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_double_effect

This is inadequate reasoning for a removal of ratings on extreme account farmers and/or sold accounts. When did we switch subject to this now?

Wrong, unless you're talking about other ratings. The spammers that received their ratings did not receive them on a whim.

I do believe that it affects individuals, yes. To say that it had an 'significant effect' on spam would be an exaggeration. This will not be true unless it this was done by multiple people and on a much bigger scale.

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I think that in certain situations the end does justify the means. I will not argue whether the usage of the trust system is not justified or not, as people have differentiating and often absolute stances on that.

How do you "move on" from a persistent/unresolved issue that has an effect on you in one way or another?

We just found a legit reason to have multiple accounts, thus there is no long a reason for you to assume having multiple accounts or engaging in account trades must always result in spam or scam. That would make it reasonable to remove the ratings you left with that reasoning.


Which make your negative ratings a generalization.


At the very least you have to believe they reduce spam. Otherwise it would be pointless do leave them in the first place and instead of exchanging arguments with me, we both could do something (more) constructive.[1]


I would think so too. Yet in one case you follow their advice in the other you dont. I wonder why.

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[1] granted we both get paid (either directly or indirectly) for posting, Id still prefer to help someone in tech support et. al instead and Im sure you have other things on your plate as well.

Based on what? I don't quite follow.

I'm not saying that it necessarily implies low posting quality, I'm saying that generally that is the case.

I claimed that my ratings left for spamming had a significant impact on spam?

It's probably the same, although I asked specifically for that idea that I had. This is why I didn't follow up on it / DT1 members wouldn't support it either (even though every member I asked liked it).

You dont remove the ratings based on that though, right? No, the number of accounts does not necessarily degrade the post quality. I could make every new post with a new account it wouldnt change the content of the posts.


Yet you (or do others?) claim your ratings had a significant impact on spam. Both cant be true. If they dont matter, remove them.


Whats theymos stance on leaving ratings for spam?

I'll give you that one. Even though I don't support creating multiple accounts solely to get paid, that's a justifiable use case. However, the likelihood of low quality posts/spam increases with the number of accounts.

The amount of left ratings is negligible at this time. If you exclude the extreme account farmers, the total of negative ratings left (at this time) is 9 (solely for such behavior). Of which 5 are tagged by at least one more DT member. Had I been hunting down people for spamming with ratings, then we'd be talking about hundreds of ratings left. Anyhow, a fair deal of said ratings were revoked over time.

Theymos didn't like the idea of a joint 'DT group' using ratings in this way. I was and still am in favor of tagging managers/services that indirectly or directly endorse spam.

What about the 3rd?


Your negative rating is a financial punishment removing them from almost all signature campaigns, making the account worthless for sale or as collateral and making deals in general sigificant more difficult.


Obviously I cant, hence Im asking.


hm, alright, might have misunderstood. Why didnt it "take off"?


I know you dont see the resemblance. Even I godwin'd and you didnt get it.

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All active ones. I feel Im missing the point, maybe rephrase the question?


Thats still not a reason to use the trust system as a moderation tool. The end does not justify the means.


Yes, create enough threads in meta or PMs to make sure there is a need to solve this. If its not working, move on.


Ill take the point back, not because I think I am wrong or you are right, but because I dont think this is an important point and Id like to avoid getting lost in details.


It sounded differently when I and Lauda talked about it, but Im willing to accept that I just understood it wrongly. I also did not bother to contact BadBear about this, because it seems they are gone. This is one of my points though, Laudas trust ratings are not served out.


Its not served out though, you have to rely on Lauda to remove the rating. If Lauda thinks you didnt improve enough, thats it.

Kinda makes pages more colorful

You can always just disable them. If majority disables the signatures, it is as good as that. The community makes the choice.


I personally agree with shorena.

If someone makes an account for every one of his posts, I wouldn't care as long as they aren't pointless meaningless posts.

I was asking for specifics. Which Global mods/Admins do you think would deal with this currently?

The problem seems to be that theymos doesn't agree. I (of course) have little idea what goes on behind the scenes, however I am fairly sure some staff members have been asking for a new global mod for a while just to be essentially ignored by theymos.

What would you propose to do differently? Wait for mods that are busy/don't care to handle the situation?

From what I can see the vast majority of recent trust ratings left by them have contained a reference, which ratings are you talking about?

Considering that Lauda was banned twice for spam, I believe they would have been only temporarily banned. If this is the case the ban wasn't lifted, they just served it out.

If anything it is easier for people to dispute these negative ratings than a forum ban.
A forum ban prevents those affected from posting anywhere other than Meta. A negative trust rating doesn't prevent anything other than joining a signature campaign or trading with others easily.

Those are general reasons to have alts, not reasons to have alts in campaigns which is what I'm arguing against. Therefore, the first two are invalid.

Again, I'm uncertain as to what you're targeting with those question as I can not punish people in this way. Elaborate?

The answer can be intuitively deducted.

It doesn't even matter who it is, as long as they are active and properly moderate.

No, I have not. I have brainstormed the idea which didn't take off.

It is on the TODO list.

It was not lifted; I have served out my ban. I'm not sure what relevance that has with the 'way that I currently handle the situation'.

You said there are none, I present you reasons and you call them invalid. Its fun discussing with you.


Of course not.


A first time offender is warned with a 7 day ban.

#1 What is your first time offender warning period?
#2 How do you keep track of possible repeated offenders?
#3 How can those that have received it appeal the punishment?


All I see is you evading my questions.

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I used to think like that, but there are none of the common safeguards and (my) questions about them get ignored or waved off. Moderations has these in place, neg bombs by Lauda dont.


Global mods and Admins.


I agree, we need more mods able to handle this. If theymos thinks Lauda is fit for the job, they should make Lauda a global mod with the powers needed to do it.


I dont argue against the existance of the problem, I argue against the solution.


I disagree.


Giving them negative ratings the way its currently done isnt either. Lauda agreed to go after managers, but instead keeps punishing campaigners. Lauda agreed to make a thread explaining their 'rules' for these ratings and how to get rid of them, they did not. They dont even bother to leave a reference anymore.


Keep in mind that Lauda themselves is in this current position of power (DT & Staff) because an admin lifted their ban (for spam). I dont think something like this is possible with the way Lauda currently handles the situation.

Distribution of wealth or in this case bitcoin may be the purpose For forum creators to allow signature campaigns.Bitcoin,as we all know was not popular and valuable in terms of dollar during it's initial days and it would have thought to be the best way to spread awareness and distribution through signature campaigns.
Pros : It definitely help in bitcoin adoption
Cons : Encourage account farming and shit posts

I consider Lauda to be a fairly reasonable person. If a person improves their post quality and consistently post that way I see no reason why they wouldn't remove the negative trust attached to the account (as it would no longer be valid).

Who do you think would do the work? The only person Global or above showing any interest in cracking down on spam on the forum is hilariousandco, and a task as widespread as cracking down on spam cannot be done by just one person who already has other responsibilities.
People are getting tired of the mindless spam all over the forum, as I would think you are. Negative trusting these users to prevent them from joining most campaigns is a good method of attempting to lessen the problem until the mods/admins show that they care at all.
It is getting past the point of it being acceptable. People are joining here specifically to join a signature campaign and spam shit for some coins. That isn't right.

Those fall invalid as I'm solely talking about signature campaign participants that enroll a plethora of accounts in the same or multiple signature campaigns. I'm well aware of those reasonable use-cases.

I'm not familiar with it, but sure.

What kind of redemption are you talking about?

I'm just going to leave a link to this thread of farmed accounts and put a   in here.

Sure, several, but feel free to debunk the for me most important ones:

1# privacy, allows users to voice unpopular opinion without fear for the main account.
2# security, users have a separate account for less secure systems.

Id even add #3 money to this list, AFAIK no campaign forbids users to have different accounts joined on a different campaign.


In this case I would say Im qualified due to my work for BadBear. Lets assume it is as you say an the majority of multi accounters are shit posters. Why punish everyone without a way out or a chance of redemption? Why are you unable to let this get handled by mods? Why do you claim a duty that is not yet yours, as your rank among staff is not yet high enough?

Disagree. There are no justifiable use-cases for the majority. The occasional constructive user may have multiple accounts, but those are a very tiny minority. The rest are shit posters / account farmers.

I base that on the time spent moderating + managing hundreds of users in Bitmixer. I'm most certain that managers and moderators (those that are tackling spam in one way or another) are the most qualified people to talk about this situation, unless there are other individuals that are somehow involved (similar amount of time/effort).

Good luck finding people that are willing to spend significant effort in a similar fashion.

Thats your personal problem though.


What do you base this on? Considering that you yourself post sometimes 400 posts a month, you could easily split this among 5 accounts and enroll in 5 (different) signature campaigns. The number of accounts do not make a spammer, the post quality does.

I'm not fine with one having that many accounts regardless of what they're used for. It is highly unlikely that one has 5 accounts enrolled in signature campaigns and is creating very constructive / useful posts. Anything under this kind of quality for this number of accounts I consider shitposting.

That campaign was last  managed (as still is?) by hilariousandco. Talk to him, not me.

Simple: They are spamming / shitposting.


Yes, but I clearly stated that said users would not be spamming or shitposting. So than I take it that it would be okay for such users.


In that case, start here:
Service: Chronobank.io - Campaign - Manager: ahmed.chronobank # Has not logged in since December.
Service: Qtum - Campaign - Manager: BlackMambaPH # Is/was a borderline spammer himself.
Service: secondstrade - Campaign - Manager: None (?).
[/quote]

Why not start with yobit spammers? There campaign is closed so we would definitely see a decrease in posts with no new members joining and only ones getting kicked out

The signatures themselves aren't the problem. The incentivisation that they provide to posting low quality shit all over the forum is.

That's a flaw in the forum's policy.

Simple: They are spamming / shitposting.

In that case, start here:
Service: Chronobank.io - Campaign - Manager: ahmed.chronobank # Has not logged in since December.
Service: Qtum - Campaign - Manager: BlackMambaPH # Is/was a borderline spammer himself.
Service: secondstrade - Campaign - Manager: None (?).

I share somewhat similar feeling. But you can easily opt for hiding signatures from your settings:

But managers are here to promote their site, will it really matter if they have red trust or not? Just look at bitcoin AG...

However, I do not see anything in the forum rules that alt accounts are wrong, or joining more than one signature campaign.

But most signature campaigns have clauses that limit one account per person in such campaign.

What is the issue with one person with 5 accounts in 5 different signature campaigns as long as they are not spamming?

You know my stance on this, Im for it and will add my ratings. I just dont have the time to do it myself. IIRC other DT have also said they would support this.

Indeed. Going after managers or services themselves is bound to be more effective than playing whack-a-mole with people who own 5-10 (if not more) accounts. This still comes back to the question whether it is appropriate usage for DT and whether we should do it or not. An organized effort between several DT members could swiftly deal with this problem.

I think the idea to go after managers is better as its their job to do something about the spammers they ban as much as its the moderators.

But if 1 person the DT list went out of their way to leave negative feedback on lets say, 100 members in active signature campaigns than this would make them be kicked out of such said campaign because 99% of them do not allow "red" members to participate. But if the "red" is not clearly justified and this is all done in one day, I think issues would arise for such DT member

There's not much that one can do when the manager or campaign in question either:
1) Acknowledges the problem, but effectively does nothing.
2) Completely dismissed your PM and/or ignores it.

The question remains whether the usage of negative trust from the default trust network is appropriate for something like this  this.

Or..

Influential members such as yourself and others that feel the same way can easily speak up against them and force their hand to rectify the situation..

Take your greivences directly to the campaign managers and above their head if necessary in whatever company they are working for..

If you feel so strongly about it you could start tagging managers and company accounts that refuse to cooperate in reducing the spam they are employing..

I bet they'd shape up real quick if they started getting tagged themselves..
"allows spam in the sig campaign he manages"
"this company won't stop spamming our board"

Trusted/influential member: "Hey guy..If you don't stop the spam emanating from the campaign you manage I'm going to leave you red trust and go tell your boss to fire you.."

Trusted/influential member: "Hey guy.. If you don't fire and replace that lazy campaign manager of yours that is allowing spam to emanate from the campaign he is running, which is a responsibility of your company, then I distrust you and your entire company for allowing and promoting this trash"

(Trusted/influential member:) or even group of average members..
Email/pm/post bomb em like congressmen when you want your voice to be heard about what you think should or should not be done..

There you go, problem solved with no government, either they fix the problem or you rightly so wreck the reputation of their company..

I bet all it would take is 1..

Because capitalism..

It's a big chunk of the communities economy, it has BTC flowing as an actual currency (imagine that), it's a great way for people to get their first little bits of BTC and start learning if they are otherwise incapable of purchasing..

If you don't like signature spammers I'd suggest you take it out on the company employing them, rather than wanting the government to solve all your problems for you with always more and more laws, do something about it yourself..

Go post in the companies threads about how you are sick of their spam with concrete references, get others to join you, blast their flagship threads with your disgust for their employees actions, call for a boycott against them by you and your likeminded, start a thread about it..

That's called the free market sorting it out..
If your ideals are shared by a strong segment of the people, and you are willing to speak up against the offenders of your ideals, then you will win..
If they are more powerful than you, more share their ideals, they will win..
In all actuality, it will eventually reach a balanced harmony between the varying degrees of ideals..

If you start pointing out their follies they will be forced to do something about it or accept that they look bad and are resented by all those who share your opinion, and lose your business..

Call em out on it..

Here's a positive: the sigs actually help me read posts in a thread better, if only as a sort of border in between posts.

This isn't to say I'd get lost in a thread without the sigs or that I'd face a difficult time navigating - it just to me seems to better space out and differentiate the text between posts. Even the avatar does the same for me.

I tend to see little relation between post quality and signature in general. People post shit with or without, paid or unpaid, flashy or subtle signature. Yes getting paid per post (or flat) is an extra incentive for some to ask for a ban, but its not the only one. I see the spam as a moderation issue and think more (active) moderators and admins handing out well deserved bans are a solution.

My problem is that it's just advertising space. The downsides of moving it to the profile would be heavily outweighed by the benefits of increased forum post quality.

^ I agree


Hey,

Signatures are cool spammers aren't. But it's not sig fault
Leave the sig alone!

Same knife can help you to prepare your food - same knife can kill somebody.


Best regards.

Not sure what exactly your problem is with signatures per se. Wana elaborate?

#1 more room than in your profile
#2 better visibility than in your profile
#3 area where ref links are allowed
#4 allows formatting and/or colors depending on your rank

My argument would have been that users could post links to interesting discussions and threads that they enjoy/started that are of importance/substance but then we run into the problem where BCT has a minuscule number of people who would advertise them, and an even smaller amount of threads to be shown.

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The profile is also not spacious enough unless the signature were replaced with a "bio" section and personal text does not support bbcode like the signature, though this is hardly an arguing point.

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If anyone is able to come up with definitive positives then that would be great, but even I have to agree that it's difficult to find any. Preferably without involving signature campaigns in it - we all know the problems involved with them.

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I understand that people have varying agreement on the negative aspects of signatures, but can someone tell me any positives?

Self-expression is not really necessary to be seen every time you post. If you have something interesting then it can be posted in your profile.

A quick pros vs cons makes me wonder why signatures still exist here.