Topic: Why are signatures allowed in the META forum? (Read 533 times)

Why would most mangers want to do anything about it right now? They get paid for doing nothing so they're not going to want to drastically improve their workload whilst they can get away with it. That's even if they have a manager in the first place. Most ICO campaign don't because it's too much work for them and if they can get away with not doing anything then they will.


Nope. That thread was largely a waste of time if theymos won't enforce it. The community should probably just take things into their own hands and start tagging the lazy campaigns and their managers. At least it worked with shitposters. It will work with campaigns as well.

I misread that then, and I apologize for being a knucklehead. I thought you were saying that in reference to my argument, after thinking that you thought I had agreed with your argument; it was a big logistical mess on my behalf and I'll just consider it a brain-fart. I agree with everything you just said.


Not if Meta was one of the disabled sections, which was the entire point of the OP. You are right though, whichever boards remain standing with signatures will be negatively affected by the shift of spammers and desperation.


It's a shame that the thread isn't much more than a page and you failed to read it.
I would simply refer you to an exchange earlier in the thread:


This has yet to be refuted, at least in this context, because it is pretty sound logic if you ask me. Especially in a section as important as this.


Would be nice if they followed and abide by the rules laid out in the only sticky of the Service section : https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/signature-campaign-guidelines-read-this-before-starting-or-joining-a-campaign-1684035 , do these guidelines get enforced, does anybody know? I haven't seen these shady/lazy or inconsiderate managers being tagged for this kind of thing. I also haven't spent much (or any) of my time looking for these instances.

Not all managers are created equal. For every responsible campaign manager, there are those who simply don't give a shit what quality of posts their participants are making, or where they're making them. It would be great if managers were willing to fix the problem, but most, at least for bounties where it costs them nothing to pay out participants because they can create tokens out of thin air, don't give a shit.

Removing signature or not is not the issue. I think the issue lie on managers counting signatures. There are so many managers that do not count posts for signature campaign when such posts are in certain boards of the forum; eg 'marketplace', 'bounty' section etc. So if the signatures are left but don't count is the same result.

The disadvantage will be that so many members will not want to comment on such areas.

I thought it was pretty obvious you were disagreeing with me? I'm not sure how you read that as me quoting you out of context to support my argument. All I said was that while disabling signatures in Meta might be beneficial, the argument presented in the OP isn't the best one for it, as you can easily re-hash it to argue signatures shouldn't be allowed in any other sub-forum as well. In general, I think the quality of posts in Meta is much higher than other sections, so there is no immediate need for doing so.


Suppose signatures were disabled in Bitcoin Discussion. Many sig spammers would be forced to find new sections to post in, and a certain percentage of them would post more often in Meta because of it. Removing signatures from a few sub-forums would just make the sections they aren't removed from even worse. It isn't a solution to the problem. And, frankly, I don't understand why you act like you're so against sig spamming, when you own multiple accounts yourself 

I think sMerit should be left as it is (apart from a reduction the maximum award). It is a good way for posters to gain an idea of peer opinion. It was the merit that I was suggesting should be exchanged. I started with 500,which is the basic requirement for a Hero. If I exchanged part of that, then I should be demoted. My suggestion was to give the extra merits some value to members earning them.

With regards to campaign banners. They shouldn't be available through the shop, inclusion could give the impression that the board approves of the campaign.

I only mentioned PHP, because I'm illiterate, but I meant the ability to use graphics, designs (outside of text) things like that; I also would probably suggest that this shop shouldn't take merit, but maybe it could take sMerit. This way people would not have to decide between de-ranking, signature features or keeping their progress. This way people would be encouraged to earn sMerit, instead of spending the merit they were given from the start. If people could simply spend their merit, too many people would be able to purchase from the shop undeservedly simply because they started out with 500 Merit. If we restrict it to sMerit, they would only be able to purchase from the shop with what they've earned (aside from the small amount of sMerit we got to start). We would probably need to set something special up for the Merit sources if we were to do something like this, for example they cannot use their Source merit to purchase from the shop, only the sMerit they have earned the same as everyone else.

I believe Merit is supposed to be a permanent mark of your past achievements, so it would be unfortunate to trade that away.

Would campaign managers also be able to put up their "button" in the shop, and any accepted participants would have to purchase this from the shop in order to participate? It is a neat idea, and I like the thought of being able to use Merit or sMerit is interesting and new ways that also benefit the health of the forum.

I don't think php would be a good idea.

I've got 582 merit points at the moment, and I need 500 to stay as a Hero. That gives me 82 "spare" points. A Legendary upgrade gives me a nice title, but it doesn't give me any other advantages, so the only incentive that merits give to me is for me to gain feedback on my posting. If I could buy the right to include a small button in my sig that was hosted by me,  then that would allow me to promote some services such as domain name registrations that may be of interest to other members.

I'm not talking about trading merits here, only the possibility of spending them in one place - a BitcoinTalk shop.

Literally the next line that you cut out of my quote, was me disagreeing with you. I don't know why you would take it out of context to pretend like I was agreeing with you, and using that as logic to justify my claim...

Limiting signatures to only certain sections of the forum would not make Meta-Spam worse, so I disagree and I hope you don't somehow think this is me agreeing with you (again). Are you suggesting that these sections aren't already terrible? Disabling the signatures for your own eyes does not help the problem; there is still endless incentive for these people to spam these boards, so they will continue to post nonsense whether you can see their signatures personally, or not.

I'm in no way suggesting that signature campaigns should not be a thing, but I think directing the nonsense away from the Meta board would be nothing except positive for Meta (unless we can stop it, entirely). Not sure how you can disagree with that.


You're acting like you have a right to advertise wherever you want. Who cares? The section is in English and gets a lot of exposure, that is no argument for why it should be there, unless you are arguing from a campaign manager's perspective, which is irrelevant to the other 99.99% of forum users that would benefit from the spam being disincentived.

The argument isn't, "Campaign managers have a tough time in Meta", I fail to see your point.


This thread is hitting me in a bad place. Maybe I am misunderstanding certain people, but this reads to me as "Signature campaigns don't pay for this section, so this section should have signatures disabled.", that makes no sense to me. Maybe they should be disabled in meta, but it certainly isn't because most campaigns don't reward for it...


This is a nice idea, but I'm not entirely sure on the implementation of it. Would you have to buy a particular "button", or would you be spending Merit to enable PHP code in your signature? I would like to hear more about the specifics of that.

I would disagree seeing as probably 90% of my constructive posts are in here these days . I think it's a slippery slope removing signatures from certain boards and you could make your argument for the main Bitcoin sub, Tech Discussion, Politics and practically everywhere else other than Off Topic maybe. Where does it end? We might as well just get rid of them site-wide because removing them from certain boards would also have negative consequences. Sure, the people who are only motivated by money will stop posting in the specific boards signatures are prohibited in, but they will then just migrate to the other sections where they can get paid and then they'll then start polluting those boards. Then people will naturally just request more and more boards meet the same fate. I think the merit system will discourage newer users from posting half-assed rubbish now, but any other spammers should just be dealt with and more importantly the campaigns that keep paying them to do so.

In my opinion there will be no discouragement if it is the rule is implemented, only a fool would love to accept discouragement after crossing the boundary.

Reducing the allowed character count would do a lot to clean up the board. Currently I am allowed 4,000 characters, and that is enough to create all those pseudo-banners. Reducing the count so that simple text signatures were used would improve the forum in my opinion.

Also I suggested that a BitcoinTalk shop allowed merits to be exchanged for products like buttons in signatures. I think that could clean up the boards.

Might be, who thought that personal signature space will be so monetized? It will bring fake accounts and spam posts.

Yes, It is already implemented in this forum for serious discussion.

Below are the few rules from serious discussion:

 - Signatures are not displayed.
 - You must be at least a Jr Member to post in Serious Discussion, and a Full Member to post in Ivory Tower.
 - Posts in Serious Discussion only activate a potential-activity period. They do not increase your post count.
 - Posts in Ivory Tower neither activate a potential-activity period nor increase your post count.

I think we can apply "no signature" and "no increase in post count" META too.

Most signature campaigns don't reward Meta posts anyway. So posting here is usually pointless for sig. campaign purposes. The only people that benefit are the signature companies, not even the posters. So I agree signatures should be disabled here.

If you neeed to get payed to contribute, then your contribution is not needed.
I agree with Vod. Signaturesshould be disabled in this part of the forum

We don't need contributions in the META forum.   In fact, this site could exist just fine if no posts were made in the META forum....

Disabling them would discourage people to contribute.

I do not think that signature should be disable in meta forum. Most of the discussions here are in English. These can be understood by the campaign managers and the advertisers also get the exposure required as it is one of the most frequently visited sections here. It is not allowed in sections where it is of no use to advertisers.

Might as well quote my post  I'm not necessarily saying it's a bad idea, this just isn't a good argument for it.


This would only exacerbate the problem in my opinion. Signature campaigns will always be a thing as long as signatures are in some way enabled, and there will always be unscrupulous managers willing to pay spammers. Limiting signatures to a small corner of the forums would turn those areas into a veritable shit-hole. Perhaps there could be child boards for boards such as Bitcoin and Altcoin Discussion, as they are most inundated with crap, that mirror the same discussion guidelines without the ability to display your signature (similar to Serious Discussion).

Personally, I've just disabled signatures entirely, since even the non-advertisement ones generally aren't very important.

I would like to see natural progression from the administration rather than forced censorship that lets everyone see something different.

Signatures are already disabled in certain sections of this forum - I believe META should be one of them.