I didn't quite get the point of this whole post, but I understood the above quite well and I agree with it.  I'm assuming it's the whole reason why Theymos hasn't nuked signature campaigns and has basically said he's not going to.

If you wanted to solve the shitposting problem on bitcointalk, you could probably do it in the blink of an eye just by banning campaigns and bounties.  I don't think that's a great idea, though I sort of used to.  I think the rules of participant selection should be tightened up a lot, and I do see some managers requiring both a merit and rank minimum, and that's a really good thing--even though that doesn't stop idiots from applying for those campaigns even though they don't qualify.

Need an example of that?  Voila:

Sig campaigns are a fantastic idea, and I've always thought it was pretty clever.  The way they get executed is another matter, and the altcoin bounties are even worse, since they don't seem to like using escrow and pay in tokens that could easily go to zero.  And while I don't think sig campaigns are going to be extinct anytime soon, there certainly don't seem to be as many of them as there used to be.  Not sure that has anything to do with bitcoin's price, but I don't have a better explanation for that.