......[edited out].............................I had various sponsored signatures for more than two years from late 2015 to early 2018, .........................[edited out]....................................... Probably I did earn close to 3 bitcoins from my participation in signature campaigns in a bit over 2 years, so it was not a bad thing in terms of scraping together a few more bitcoins.
Upon your experience, it is quite interesting if it is happened to me which came from a 3rd world country because with that amount, i can pay up my college fees till i graduated.
Well, as you may recognize, in late 2015, when I began with my participation in signature campaigns, BTC prices had been stagnant and going down for the two prior years, so accordingly during the beginning of my participation BTC prices were around $250 and they were going up during that time to peak in the $19k arena... so yeah, some of the campaigns were scrambling to figure out how to pay their participants when BTC were rising so rapidly (especially in 2017 and in late 2017).
These days, it would take a lot longer to earn 3 BTC through any kind of regular BTCTalk member (posting) participation in signature campaigns.
Nonetheless, I do understand also that signature campaigns can still constitute a fairly decent income for some members, depending on their local economies, and surely some of those financial incentives had ben screwing up the forum because of the incentive to spam or even farm accounts.. .so in the long run, if the forum is figuring out ways to filter out farmed accounts, then contributions will be better, and I also agree that a lot of members are likely giving merits based on quality of posts and the sharing of substantive ideas, rather than the turn off that comes from folks posting nonsense or directly seem to be attempting to scheme or scam other members.