Terminate all signatures altogether and the problem will go away instantaneously. Keep the banner ads. No incentivizing to post means there will be much less fluff and more on point and concise conversations. As it stands now, it's all artificially inflated chit-chat with zero value.
You already said that and I already applied some logic as to why that is a mistake, I would like a counterargument to my thesis instead of simply repeating yourself:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2605767.msg26559219#msg26559219Like I said, apply game theory. SEO is SEO, and we don't want Roger Ver ranking bitcoin dot com's forum as the first bitcoin forum that shows up when you google "bitcoin forum". Bitcoin is only going to keep getting more popular, once the (real) mainstream arrives, you want this forum on top, not his.
Add sections to the forum where signature campaigns are not allowed for high level discussion and leave the rest as it is, ban obvious 100-post-a-day 3rd worlders: forum becomes tolerable and everyone is happy. Maybe add a newbie jail again too.
What needs the most priority right now is account recovery. We can't have 2 guys taking care of that only, leaving people waiting for ages to get their accounts back. The meta section is filled with people posting address signatures and waiting to be recovered. I wouldn't like to be on their shoes seeing how unreliable the system is.
Okay here are a couple of ideas that I could think of:
1. Start banning users that post 5+ posts a day that can be termed as spam.
2. Require unique phone number authentication for every user.
1. You could post 20 times and still wouldn't be spam if it isn't spam. If you are having a conversation replying back and forth with someone on a thread the count can easily go up for example. I post in other forums where I make 0 money and this is the case (I post way more there than here). Please don't ruin the forum for everyone else.
2. Nonsense. Bitcoin is supposed to be anon friendly, this forum should remain anon friendly as well.