This is why the campaigns will never get banned. This forum would have excellent content, but probably not even half of the traffic. I think banning yobit's campaign would be good. Make the campaigns know if they do not curb the spammers they will be banned. Hilarious has told them plenty of times to clean it up IIRC.
Hilarious is actually cleaning house on close to a monthly cycle now that he is in charge. They no longer take Jr. members and this will help cut the garbage posting down, since it was to easy before to just start a new account.
Sometimes I think blaming signatures is a attempt to not see things for what they are, being that there is less draw to this forum for a lot of people due to tiffs, disagreements and lack of depth.
The push to get rid of signatures has allowed people to dictate how they want the forum as opposed to hearing what the majority may want.
No one knows because the loudest bark wins out more than not.
So imagine signatures are gone because so many here that have established accounts look at it as filth. You honestly think posts will improve? Lot of the members I see over and over frowning on signatures do not post indepth threads. They may run business here but is that being part of the community or exploiting them? Think a lot of the services here are the latter, so where is this community that will suddenly reestablish its self!
Signatures attract new people and give them coin to figure the ropes out. I know there is a lot of spammers that come out of it as well and agree something should be worked out, but I do not think you will get this sudden utopia once signatures are gone.
Personally think limiting to full member and up is fine but maybe setup something for newer accounts to get their feet wet. Faucets no longer cut it for this aspect.
Yes, there might be other reasons for the garbage contents but so far every serial spammer that I've seen had a paid signature. Some get upset when I report them because they lose their income:
Hey such moon ur so very bad people why I'm storyrealtivity that u reported yesterday. Because of that I'm banned from this forum. I can't buy medicine for my mom. Because u are so selfish . selfish. I hope u will banned soon in this forum. You are very judgemental person . I hope someday if ur mom have sick u can't buy medicine to ur mom because u don't have money.!
That's what it has become. And that was a multi-account spammer.
No, removing/restricting signature ads would not make the forum magically more intelligent and helpful and friendlier etc. But that doesn't mean the financial incentive to produce useless posts is some kind of a God-given or constitutional right that shouldn't be touched. Signature ads have no useful contribution to a discussion. I don't mind them if they help promote Bitcoin businesses. I don't mind people getting paid for posts they would make anyway, but not when it becomes a job, a way to make money at the expense of other forum members who need to waste time reading the crap.