Quote from: Welsh on July 09, 2018, 10:56:52 PM

I'm quite passionate about the forum as you might of gathered, and I'm only nitpicking so that we can actually come up with a solution rather than proposing some, and not really going into depth about them, and then this type of thread resurfaces again in a few weeks, and we circle around the issue again.

A handful of them are, and so am I. I am all down, for new changes, that might help this forum. Especially because I have learnt so much, the only way I can repay is by helping it out,in its desperate times.

Quote from: Welsh on July 09, 2018, 10:56:52 PM

Quote from: pugman on July 09, 2018, 10:41:14 PM

Altcoin section literally has only one mod appointed to it. Kudos to mrprep for moderating that board for years, but there won't be another mod in that board, unless one or more users start reporting aggressively. So the problem is both.

I know that there's several people who are spending their time reporting in that section. You only have to take a look at the modlog to see that there are hundreds of posts every day getting removed.

I've recently considered making a Discord/Telegram account just so I can join their groups, and see if they are offering an incentive to post on their threads, because it seems to be the trend right now. Investigating the thread whether they are offering an incentive to post is time consuming enough, let alone if they aren't, and you have to report each post individually.

Yeah, mprep is the only moderator assigned, and he's a Global moderator too. But, it definitely spills over to other moderators from time to time. I received a personal message from cyrus about a specific report so I know that he deals with reports from time to time.

That wouldn't be of much use, I really want to know how good the autoreply bot is, tons of alt accounts can be operated from there, without logging in. People just might prefer that.

Quote from: Welsh on July 09, 2018, 10:56:52 PM

Quote from: pugman on July 09, 2018, 10:41:14 PM

The restriction is a tad too much. For those who don't read the rules/terms of bounties, put them in SMAS/delete their replies and don't pay them. Enforce a new rule/term: If any post is made with twitter and facebook links, that user shall be banned from further bounties/campaigns and he shall not be paid.

Getting the bounty managers to enforce this would be difficult. Especially, because the list is subjective. I think it's a good movement personally, but it is subjective. Unless, theymos is willing to specify certain guidelines for campaign managers to follow, and actually enforce it we won't be able to get them to follow certain things that would make the campaign less spammy, because they simply don't care.

I have been saying this for months now, theymos should just make a guideline for signature campaigns and an official set of rules. There are just a few stickies here and there(by theymos) saying what is allowed and what isn't, but it would be really helpful, if he compiles one list, with new issues coming by everyday, that list could really help sorting things out.

Quote from: Welsh on July 09, 2018, 10:56:52 PM

Quote from: pugman on July 09, 2018, 10:41:14 PM

A few lazy managers caused this spam, and now legitimate people shouldn't pay for this. And the likeliness of theymos implementing this is almost zero. He did say that this would be his last resort(banning signatures overall if merit system fails). But he is apparently swamped with things and is currently looking to start a company with the same intent as a forum,and to hire a CEO for that.

I agree. I don't like restrictions either as it normally impacts on the legitimate users more than the malicious users.

And literally, any suggestions that anyone is coming up is related to restrictions. There should be another possibility without having those restrictions.

Quote from: Welsh on July 09, 2018, 10:56:52 PM

Quote from: pugman on July 09, 2018, 10:41:14 PM

If there were a way for theymos to limit the number of alt accounts a person can have, that could solve a huge problem. Bots could be controlled and so could be shitposting. I don't see any legitimate reason for a person to have more than 3 alt accounts other than just to shitpost. Accessing hundreds of accounts using TOR would be almost impossible, for TOR takes a few minutes just to bypass recaptcha. So most shitposters won't likely use TOR. It'd take a lot of time.

Right, even if we did try, and limit it. Several users use public wifi, and VPNs. Especially, in countries which the government isn't so friendly to Bitcoin. It would be incredibly difficult to find alternate accounts without them exposing themselves or by taking an in depth inestigations per account. Most of which would have to be done by an admin, and considering both theymos' words, and the account recovery issue right now I don't think they'll have the time too.

I don't see how governments being unfriendly towards bitcoin, is related to people using a VPN to access bitcointalk.

In a few countries where VPN is banned, I have heard stories that random officers started checking people's phones to see if they had VPN installed or not. I don't believe that story, but I can see them doing that.

Quote from: Welsh on July 09, 2018, 10:56:52 PM

Quote from: pugman on July 09, 2018, 10:41:14 PM

So only the VPN issue exists, blacklist the most common VPN IPs?

There's several pieces of software out there which hundreds of new VPNs are coming online, and being used. They could just use them. There would be no way to regulate this AFAIK. The users registering multiple accounts aren't likely using the most common VPNs because these have likely already accumulated too much evil points to make it feasible.

The new softwares that come out don't work well, they mostly use the same blacklisted IPs the other VPNs do.

Quote from: bitart on July 10, 2018, 08:40:10 PM

But on the long run (when the merit system will be fine tuned) we can set up the ignore system like this:
- No ignore (can see everyone)
- Small ignore (ignoring users with default merit, who haven't gathered additional merits)
- Medium ignore (ignoring those who gathered less than 10% additional merits for their rank)
- Strong ignore (ignoring those who gathered less than 30% additional merits for their rank)

In this case, ignore lists are not needed, it can be automated (and still not mandatory to use, to let people choose if they really want to read shitposts...)
This needs the merit system to work as expected, so it needs time, but it can be a kind of automated solution.

EDIT:
I've changed my mind.
Why not to implement the second solution immediately, to test it? If it's not mandatory, people can not complain about it.
For newbies, who had no chance to gain merits, there will be the merit sources (with no ignore list activated of course) so they will have the chance to gather some merits to escape the ignore lists.

How does this help with the Spam problem? Its just personal preference. And there are legit users who haven't earned little or any merits, who have more than average level of posts. I don't think this would be that great of an idea.