Topic: Why create threads for shit posters? (Read 662 times)

Yes while this is true, this is not for all shit posters or spammers I have seen post where someone would just totally speak out of context of everything the thread is about and there are so many other way they act that would make it seems like spamming notably, inappropriate quoting and sometimes wall of text, which make reading that post annoying or difficult even if such person is speaking right and this something I hate most.

The reason while still yet these is not common in the technical board is from the fact that people care much more on what others are posting there, is either you're corrected openly and if you continue the same style you will likely be tagged as a spammer or shitposter.

Sometimes if the error is not that much I choose to call such person attention than to report them though that's if I'm about to make a post on that same thread and watch if such person do take correction or are just doesn't even bother to care and so will rather want to report to moderator next time.

No, the reason why technical support and technical discussion boards have the lowest number of spams is that it's hard to spam these boards because they require a technical knowledge to make a technical question. What's going to spammer ask, how to fix the bug in this code? Or a question regarding to Bitcoin node setup? These questions can't be spammed and a person that comes up with similar questions, doesn't belong to the group of spammers. Spammers usually choose Economy, Altcoin discussion and similar boards because it's much easier to spam here. Just ask the basic question: Bitcoin vs gold. It's easy to write thesis about this topic, it's easy for absolutely everyone to state their opinion on this.

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I have a question. If I think that there is a thread created that doesn't carry much value and is created by a spammer to feed the spammers, if I report the original post and moderator approves, will the whole thread be deleted? Should I include in the comment for the moderator that I'm reporting this post because I believe the thread is created by a spammer to feed the spammers?

You actually didn't get the connection rightly and the shitposter has already been defined by this unofficial rule " No zero or low value, pointless or uninteresting posts or threads."

However, what you later infer in the body is similar to spamming and not shitposting, and mind you, frequent posts don't automatically translate to spamming/shitposting and neither should you "assume" it for AI-generated content. Some people are gifted and write better content than the best AI-generated ones and may post it faster than the AI-generated ones (if they like).

Look at it this way, what if an AI-generated post is well-written and the user decides to give it at least 1-hour posting interval, is it any better? Who is indeed better among the two?

If a thread is created for reporting a specific user/ spammer, the author possibly does it on purposes.

Some possible purposes

• Get more attention from moderators and other supplement evidence from other forum members, to ban that spammer more quickly.
• Get eligible post count in a new created thread while if a report post is made in a Mega thread, it will not be counted by campaign manager, if the campaign rule is against mega threads.
• More purposes too.

Yeah, you did misunderstand the op here, i believe they are talking about topics involving just a single user, i.e. you find a single user spamming or making AI posts, and you create a thread about it. Take note that i believe that sometimes even reporting a single case may be necessary, especially if the user is a chronic spammer, just want to clarify that this topic isn't about reference or report threads that have been used for a long time to make reports.

That's not why the board has a low number of spam, the board has low numbers because that's not where spammers go to spam. Spammers need generic conversations that they can add little to nothing to but still get post quota for their campaigns.

The technical boards requires you to know what you're saying or it'll be considered spam and spammers don't want their effort to be for nothing when the post gets deleted.

Something else, is the threads there don't get lots of replies (pages) to hide their spam so anything they write can be seen by many and this will draw attention to them which they don't like so they'll prefer a more active boards like gambling discussion.

Unless for extreme situations that the attention of the forum/admins is needed, I don't also fancy the creation of threads for every single case of spamming but we know some people want what I call eyeservices (let people see them like they're doing the most and to also get merited) but those really cleaning the forum are doing it with the report button and they have high numbers of good reports. Kudos to them.

We haven't heard back from OP in the last three days regarding whether he thinks threads like the AI post reference thread and some other threads like this one are useless. Now I feel like that OP wanted to become a cool guy by saying that because he did not submit any reference to back his claims. OP should know that not everyone creates threads to fishing merits. Some of those threads have importance which the forum members use every day to write their references. Not sure what made him think that such threads are useless. Or did I misunderstand anything, OP?

I quite agree with you because I was just thinking to myself; assuming I want to report a shit poster and let's say I do it via PM to a moderator responsible for that board and they probably don't respond, will it be out of place to create a thread for it so others can see it and maybe another mod who's not in charge of the board can look it up and act on it?".
 Some of these threads weren't created with malice or as a means to encourage more spam but to call out this user who has been defaulting when they may have been warned on several occasions to stop spamming, that's how I see them.

That's very true, even spammers need to have some idea about the topic about which they might be able to write but these days spammers can take some help from AI like ChatGPT so they can get some basic idea about the topic and then they might add some more stuff to it.

The technical board isn't for all members and sometimes even if you're knowledgeable about technical aspects of the things, but still you stay away from that board as there are already enough members present at that board who help out everyone with their posts.

Don't feed them with your shit posts too, if you want to minimize their impacts in the forum. You can not stop them, simply you can't, so the best thing you can do is don't feed them and help them to bump their shit threads.

In only some boards, there is a bump score to reduce effects of bumping from shit posters. In most of boards, if you bump a shit thread, effect is big.

Similarly, don't feed the troll!

I see it differently.

Works from a single user can be not accurate, or simply not enough for moderators to do their job. If a report is made publicly, and get supports from other forum members, there would be more evidence to use ban hammer on shit posters.

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Some shit posters have habit of creating new shit threads for discussions. They do this with many purposes.

• Some campaign managers don't count posts after like page 5, page 10, page 100 or 200. It is good but not enough and shit posters know how to easily avoid it: by creating new shit threads for getting post count from managers.
• They do this to show that they're productive in creating threads, that can be counted as good contribution to their signature campaigns.

The bottom line is, if a thread is low in quality, you can easily see low quality posters joining it while quality posters in community usually ignore those threads. Consequently effects from such shit threads are smaller than how it looks. Imagine that most of thread participants are from 'friends' or 'farms', companies pay money for their campaign participants won't happy with these employees if they know the truth.

I once made this post https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.64301005 talking about how we can use AI to our advantage by using it to fish out spams and shit posts. But the argument against the whole idea was that there will be much workload on the moderators if machines start reporting posts as there are fewer moderators to attend to all the reports.

The fact is, spam and shit posters are increasing by the day and efforts put in so far to reduce them are not enough. It is either the number of moderators are increased or the use of automated systems is considered.

Even to spam, you need to have some idea on topic being discussed, meanwhile almost all stuff goes above the head in that board for an average user (including me), so that's also reason why there is minimal spam there.

I don't think the quality of one's posts depends on how new or old they are. Differing opinions don't make a post become of low quality or just because I don't agree with your opinion, it doesn't make me qualified to call you a shitposter. A newbie might sound different but only if he lacks knowledge, and of course, if a legendary member posts useless stuff, he can also be categorized as a shitposter regardless of the rank he has in the forum.

Due to account sales and accounts changing hands sometimes, you will find high-ranked members making low-quality posts, similarly, some newbies who might have good knowledge about things in general but has a low rank in the forum will be seen making good quality posts. So it's all subjective, in my opinion.

Exactly so, because opinions differ and a newbie making a post or replying a post would sound way different from an oldie who does same and I think oldies here have qualified to have their post classified as shit post, in places where they don't do well more than newbies could ever be classified into such a category.

I also thought that the topic created by the OP is an apple in the garden of this topic. Do you, OP, believe that the topic opened by Nutildah is unnecessary? If not, and you mean some other issues, then I probably didn't notice them, and it would be good to see an example of the topics you meant.
Well, you can also create a report to the moderators with the definition that some topics are useless. And together we will observe how the moderators treat this.
Sometimes our opinions, unfortunately, do not coincide with the opinions of others. And all we can do is send a report and see if it is not considered.

I also reason along with you that in some cases, we may not have to reflect some cases by creating threads all because the member involved have done a wrong thing, simple quote, report to the moderator or notifying the OP himself about the mistake done could be amend than creating a thread on top of the discussion, but there are some severe cases whereby one may need to create a thread and file a report for some discoveries that needed the public opinions over it.

Of course your thread is an important one moderators can bump there anytime when the need to see into a serial spammers behaviour or probably some shit poster of AI user comes up. Some persons don't get the reason for my thread. The main idea I'm talking against is creating a thread for just one user because of one or two spams or shit posts he created. When it is very much possible to just press the report to moderator button on those posts or better still post it in topics like yours that's if the situation gets worse.

The whole idea is to assist in an effective moderation of the forum instead of making complaints about spams and AI shit posts on the forum every now and then.

Yeah it's like a complicated problem.

The forum ban mixers > resulting reduce of signature campaigns and pay rates > high quality posters choose to be inactive or post rarely than before. Also we lack of new generation that can post high quality, this making the section become dead.

So we only have two choices here, either high quality with less activity or low quality with high activity.

Unfortunately for longevity and attract more people, high activity is preferable regardless the quality.

It is not a problem with the detection tools, yeah some tools return false positives, but if you visit the AI spam report thread, you'll see that users who frequently report posts there have found tools that can nearly tell if a post is AI generated, if one, two or three of these tools affirm that the post is AI generated, then it likely is.

The problem is that there is no 'rule' yet on posting AI generated content, many times the mods usually delete the threads and posts which shows they agree with the report, and i think at most the user gets nuked, but they don't get banned, which means they'll be back posting AI spam again and again even if caught.

Since my thread is mentioned, i'm here to mention that this thread is used as reference when reporting certain posts. In my experience, moderator is likely to take action when i include link to post/thread which explain why certain post violate forum rules.

It's fine to create a post just to raise awareness about how serious spam is on the forum, but if someone is going to make a thread every time they spot a spam or low-quality post, that’s not really productive anymore. One or two threads addressing the issue are enough since the main goal is awareness.

Reporting remains the most effective way to reduce spam. The problem is, there are far fewer people reporting compared to the number of spammers, and not all reported posts, especially in mega threads, get caught. Maybe it’s better to limit the number of threads created about spam and instead focus on reporting spam threads so we avoid duplicating posts that have already been discussed elsewhere. It’s definitely a challenge with the size of the forum and the number of users, but "teamwork" is key in reporting and managing spam.

I also support using the report to moderator button for general spam posts. But sometimes, reporting to the moderator report does not work regarding AI posts. I mean, the moderators do not have enough time to check using the AI detector tools to check if that post is AI generated or not. In this case, forum member nutildah created a thread AI Spam Report Reference Thread so you have some proof that those posts are AI generated.

I am pretty sure you know this thread because it has 34 pages so far, and I would say it's a successful thread like "report plagiarism" thread. Utilizing such a thread is always a good idea instead of creating a new thread for every user.

You didn't understand my point, I believe. I didn't say that you said my thread is a spam, I know it isn't, but since you are talking about threads that are created to report spam or spammers, I thought mine might be one of those you are talking about because I created that thread to report and discuss about a user who is a serial spammer.

So I thought I should give my explanation about why I created that thread and that I did report the posts of the guy before and after creating that thread and I believe there is nothing wrong with that because creating the thread makes others report the spammer as well, so that makes it more effective. I hope you understand what I mean now. 

Now most of those topic you see that is created reporting shitposter are because maybe simply because mod aren't active in those board so even though they reported them there would be no action taken place. Sometimes I have to think if theymos is actually reviewing some of those mods that are being appointed to some of the boards as mod.

I can also see board that their mods hardly come online to do their task at this point what is left for theymos is to reappoints a mod to take place of those board to act respective. So when they reported the general admin or global moderator can like spot out that person and have their posts deleted without any hesitation, I think that is all and no one loves creating topics for reporting shitposter.

Then again for plagiarism there is always a thread where to report such person and this is would be based on review and adequate findings to see if actually such person plagiarized as they said before sanctioning that is all.

I don't know if that's true or false, as I don't frequent the technical board(s) all that much, but my strategy has always been to put entire sections on ignore (like Altcoin Discussion and, unfortunately, Bitcoin Discussion).  Not everyone wants to do that, nor should they.  So if you want to help fight the shitposting problem, either choose to self-moderate your own threads when you create them or report crap posts to the mods when you see them--the latter solution has been suggested so many times, I couldn't even estimate how many times I've read it.

By the way, for those of you who might not know, this issue has been an ongoing one for probably 10 years or more, but it got much worse in the few years leading up to the merit system creation in 2018.  Unfortunately I think post/thread quality has taken a huge step backward lately, as I've seen the Economics section become infested with idiots starting threads that have no value.  That used to be relatively rare compared with other sections.  Ugh.

AI has made the problem much, much worse.  I don't think the tools to catch AI-written shitposts has caught up to the rate at which the morons are using AI to generate garbage.  If I'm wrong about that, someone please tell me.

I completely agree with the overall message of focusing on reporting spam or low-quality posts directly to moderators rather than creating new threads. Creating a thread to call out specific instances often leads to more clutter and could attract further spam. Reporting posts is a more efficient way to help the forum stay clean without drawing unnecessary attention to bad actors. However, as mentioned, if a user becomes a persistent and notorious offender, then creating a thread could be justified to highlight the issue. It's all about balance and making sure our efforts contribute to the community in a meaningful way.

I might be wrong but I think most of the thread creators sometimes do this not out of just making fuss but to actually draw the attention of the other members to the specific shitposter. One of the scenarios is when a member is been reported numerously for a certain shit posting and the reporter actually finds such posts still not deleted meaning that either the moderator are comfortable with the post or they just happen to not have attended to it. In any of the cases the reporter might result into creating a thread; one to get the attention of the moderators and secondly to get clarification as to maybe such posts are allowed if at all it is the moderators that left it.

If we look at the reports thread most especially by reputable members it is against a serial shitposter or scammer and not just a one time, although I also don’t like unnecessary creation of threads just to keep the forum clean I think some are needed for some members

Creating a new topic about a user who is constantly shitposting or posting AI, without first reporting the posts is kind of wrong, but it is okay to report the posts to the moderator and then create a topic about the user, this will get many users to also report their posts and it could draw the attention of the moderators faster.

There are also dedicated threads for different kinds of report, i.e. plagiarism, malware and suspicious links and AI spam, users should also use these topics for their reports because i am sure mods visit them often.

As the name of the board implies, it technical board and that means only technical discussions take ace in that board and as we all know, we only have few technical posters in the forum that make up for the activities of that board, so newbies with zero technical knowledge can't make a thread or comment on that board, which makes the board less spamming to a great extent.

The responsibility of keeping the forum spam free is to report any low quality posts and the mod will do the needful.

Threads are usually created for particular reasons, just not for spam or shitposts. For example, if you noticed a user constantly posting AI-generated content, then it does make sense to create a specific topic or report/post on an existing topic. Because you do need to add some solid evidence against this type of report. But for low or zero-value posts, you don't need to provide any evidence, just use the report to moderator button, and they will handle it. So creating new topics varies depending on the situation. 

I smiled immediately I saw your reply. Do you think this your particular post is a spam? If not I don't think you should be bothered about this post refering to you. If I wanted to say anything like your thread is a spam I would have done that in the reply I made on your thread. Yours is a different case don't get the wrong message. From this thread. The main reason for this thread is to encourage everyone to report spam posts to Moderators rather than replying them.

This is more like the exception we are talking about here. Just having a couple of consecutive shit posts calls for reporting to the moderator. Something more serious than that can then a thread be necessary.

Exactly that's the point. Only in extreme cases where a ban would be necessary that's when you are supposed to create threads.

Great observation. At some point I noticed users creating threads to report shit posts or spams or whatever they call. Which in my own estimation is totally unnecessary because those type of posts create room for spams as well. Simply put this topic is a call to action for everyone on the forum rather expending your energy on creating a thread to report shit posts, channel that energy into reporting the posts after all we are all moderators despite not having the official title. It is a collective responsibility to keep the forum clean.

Is it against the forum rules to do both? I only know main two threads designated for such reports and each of them serve their purpose. One for plagiarism cases and the other for AI spam. Not only do the mods get to see a detailed report, the general forum is also alerted of accounts engaging in such behavior so even if the accounts are not banned, we can watch out for them and reference their previous acts if need be.

I think the problem here is that forum members would see a low quality thread and still post under it even though they know the OP is saying a whole bunch of nothing.

I don't know, but it seems like you are referring to/targeting the thread that I have created a few days ago about a similar issue, this one:

Shouldn't there be a rule to prevent burst-posting or spam such as this?

First of all, I didn't create that thread because I didn't want to report the posts from the guy that I mentioned in the thread, but I did it because it was too much. Besides, I did report his posts despite creating a thread about the issue because I found it abnormal. I wouldn't create a thread about every shitposter or low-quality poster that I witness over the forum every day because there are too many, and I only report the posts that I find useless or extremely low-quality in each section that I visit.

The reason why I created that thread was to involve more people in it and bring it to the attention of the moderators who watch this board and check threads here. Don't you think it would make it more effective if I'm letting more people report his posts along with me instead of reporting a few of his posts alone? If I can report 20 posts single-handedly, 10 of us can do 100, and that will make it more concerning for mods to maybe make them punish the guy for spamming so much.

So, in my point of view, there is nothing wrong in creating threads about extreme shitposters, those you know are doing it abnormally. I wouldn't say we should create threads for every shitposter out there because that wouldn't make sense, but in some cases, it becomes essential to do so only to bring more attention to the matter.

If you really want to become a forum contributor, then report low quality posts including spam, posts that violate the rules and many others. Reporting poor quality posts to moderators is a real contribution from forum users that other users never actually know about, unless you tell them how many posts you have reported. So, it is always recommended that you and other users contribute to maintaining the cleanliness of the forum by not making low quality posts and reporting other users' posts that you consider to be of low quality.

But no matter how hard you work to report posts to keep the forum looking clean, I think spammers will always be there whether they post for their signature campaign or just for fun or something. If spam hunters or forum cleanliness guards were more appreciated and recognized than cheaters hunters, then many users would definitely compete to report spammer posts to moderators.

One doesn't exclude the other, and if I had to guess, I would say that those who make a thread about specific users usually report their posts as well.

I don’t see anything wrong with creating a thread every once in a while about a shitposter that is really sticking out for some reason as raising awareness about them might help get them banned.

Our responsibility when we see low-quality posts is to report them to the moderators. They will take the necessary actions. But I support creating a thread when the user or member becomes a notorious shitposter or spammer. Sometimes, you see users spamming different boards with low-quality posts. In other cases, the post might have been reported, and there is no action. Creating a thread draws the attention of moderators to that member. Such a thread is usually locked immediately after it has fulfilled its purpose.

Do you mean threads like this: Users who spread false/fake/unhelpful information on technical board?

But I don't see many of these kinds and the ones we have serve their purpose too cause users can report the posts and give the link to the posts that were posted on these in the comment section while you use the Report to Moderator' button which makes it easier for the staffs to moderate them.

Nah incorrect.

Low spams happened in technical board doesn't only mean the reputable members are good at reporting shit posts, it also need moderators to delete the posts.

Yeah there are no proof if people are reporting shit posts outside the technical board, but at least I have a proof some of my reported posts didn't handled by moderators. Would you still blame the community?

Partially disagree, sometime the moderators reacts when you give more attentions rather than just report to moderator, that's why users creates dedicated thread for shit posts or AI posts.

Making a series of consecutive is not the point of shitposting. It's all about the content of the post that's why reporting them sometimes being overlook if the quality of the post has some value or on topic. This is probably the reason why creating a thread to voice out is always the best choice for concern user.

Can we define first what's the right post interval to determine what's wrong or right here? Some people post with short interval because they see interesting topic quickly when they browse.

No one likes shit posts except probably you too are a shit poster. Obviously there is no rule that boldly says you shouldn't post consecutively however it seems for a very long time spammers and shit posters have taken advantage of that. The closest rules we have against shit posting on the forum are;

• " No zero or low value, pointless or uninteresting posts or threads."
• "No off-topic posts."
• "Posting plagiarized content is not allowed."
• "No duplicate posting in multiple boards (except for re-posting topics in the local language boards if they're translated and re-posting marketplace topics in the altcoin boards if altcoins are accepted)."
• "Bumps, "updates" are limited to once per 24 hours per thread. Bumping multiple threads at the same time is allowed if it's not annoying."

Now if you look closely at all the rules here which I picked from Unofficial list of (official) Bitcointalk.org rules, guidelines, FAQ by mprep, you will notice that there is no particular rule that outrightly says making a series of consecutive posts on different threads or boards is against the rules, however for the case of a shit poster, it's wrong and against the forum rules simply because of the first rule; " No zero or low value, pointless or uninteresting posts or threads.".

Now the big question here is how do you approach such posts?
One wrong and most common approach is creating a thread to report such users. The reason is simple, we complain every now and then about shit posters on many boards, when we could very much assist moderators to spot them instead of creating a thread for someone that simply just posted shit or used AI content.

One board with the lowest number of spams and shit posters is our technical board and that is because they have a lot of reputable members there who are good at reporting shit posts, spams and AI  therefore making moderation easier and more efficient. So instead of creating a thread for someone that creates shit posts or AI posts, simply make use of the REPORT TO MODERATOR button.

EVERYONE CAN ASSIST IN MODERATION !!!

I was a bit sceptical on what to title this thread so suggestions are welcomed.