Correct, it doesn't really keep it in its own little quarantine because they all just leave and roam the forum posting crap to get their bounties or whatever marketing they need to do. In addition, they build up their account status and have an optional bonus waiting for them at the end through account selling which then opens up a market of accounts for larger scammers.
New rule? No Altcoin/ICO advertising in signatures
Would it not be easy to blank out/block a signature if any link inside of the signature links to any thread under the altcoin subforums? ... making this a somewhat mod-free approach.
They will just cloak the links. Most urls go to off site anyway. Theymos said he can blacklist entire campaigns signatures but this has been requested several times since we came up with the sig guidelines thread but so far nothing has been removed.
Good point. There would be ways to deal with this for url shorteners but there are plenty that establish their own external sites and link to them.
If the rule was accepted, maybe a 'report signature' link and just leave it up to other members to report altcoin/ICO advertising sigs to mods?
And, maybe a bit extreme, but why not just disable external links in signatures all together? Force all signature links to stay within the forum. Inspires more local traffic on the forum and would allow the aforementioned block of any signature linking to the altcoin section. I would think this may also create a desire for
real advertisers to want banner spots on the forum to have a better chance at driving traffic to their own websites and sort of requires them to maintain a thread on the forum as well, if they want to advertise through signatures.