The problem is not paid signatures in general.
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.
Agreed and agreed. There are a lot of members here who advertise in their signatures and who aren't shitposters. Chipmixer participants are a good example of that, and I really wish all campaigns had DarkStar_'s standards. He only accepts Sr. Members and above, and in general the output of its members is above average.
Unfortunately you see the exact opposite when you look at bounty participants. They're mostly Jr. Members and they write one-line garbage.
All of this has been said many times before, and I'm not sure if it's even worth discussing anymore. I'm sure Theymos is well aware of the problem
and of the solution. He's just choosing not to act.
I also agree with OP that it's a damn shame that what should be the best section of bitcointalk is actually the worst. Anyone coming here genuinely wanting to discuss bitcoin issues will be sadly disappointed when they post in a thread there and their post never gets read or responded to. It's a discussion forum after all, but it's morphed into a
posting forum.
Most of those suggestions are honestly very biased and would only work in the favor of the high ranked accounts.
But it's not the high-ranked accounts that are doing the spamming. It's very clearly people who come here just to spam and who create new accounts at will and who have no barriers preventing them from achieving Jr. Member rank.