The quality of posting in the main section of the forum has dropped dramatically since I joined. Nothings going to change unless paid signatures are stopped though (and yes Im aware that Im wearing one but I dont post like the spammers present there).
A better solution would be to crack down on the ICOs campaigns that are paying them to post rubbish in there. I've also been saying for years that that board needs
at least one dedicated mod. I've messaged theymos about this probably 3-5 times over the past month or two alone. I managed to get a list of the top reporters in there from him about two months or so ago, but no action has been taken so far to implement one. In fact, I even messaged him about it yesterday. The longer theymos doesn't act on these things the worse it gets. Assigning a mod probably takes a few clicks from him and the benefits would be self-evident with no further action required from him. You can even just promote an existing mod to there if there's an issue with adding new people (though we should probably do both).
Three things can be done to help this situation which don't require much effort from theymos:
Assign some dedicated mods to trash spam threads on sight and help clean up the place.
Punishments for campaigns that are consistently paying spammers to churn out junk in there.
Remove signatures from lower ranks completely and/or make a merit requirement to become a Junior. Ideally you wouldn't be able to have a signature until you've become a Member which requires ten merit. The forum is being over-populated with clueless kids who have little to no knowledge about bitcoin but are churning out nonsense just to get paid. This can't be acceptable. If you can't acquire ten merit then you shouldn't be able to earn here and these people should stick to claiming bounties until they can earn the merit.
Signatures up to junior member of even to member have to be removed completely, and there have been other many good proposals that they will never be implemented or will take ages until they do.
Most of those suggestions are honestly very biased and would only work in the favor of the high ranked accounts.
I don't think they're biased; they're logical. Newbies and Juniors who can barely speak English and know little to nothing about bitcoin shouldn't be able to get paid to post here. This is the campaign's fault for not doing their job properly so we need to force them to do this and removing signatures from lower ranks is the only way to do this. They barely have a signature anyway and it's pretty much useless to pay them for it, but ICOs don't care. They pay people in tokens they've created for free so they might as well pay as many people as they can because they still get their name out there even if it is minimal. The ICOs and the spammers they pay have ruined this forum and that needs to change. Remove signatures from lower ranks so bots and the worst of the worst can't get paid for writing crap or copy and pasting. Either prove your worth here by getting ten merit or purchase a Copper Membership if you want to be able to earn.
Theymos has said that this forum isn't a welfare system for people but that's what it has sadly become. We need to find a compromise here and removing signatures from lower ranks and punishing ICOs that pay for rubbish are one of the only two ways I can think of that will tackle this effectively. This doesn't effect anybodies ability to post here - just earn, and that shouldn't be a right for everyone, especially those who aren't qualified to do so and also do it at the detriment of the forum.