~snip~
I believe that in total, I was a part of 3 signature campaigns, and at first, I thought that it was so great to get paid for activities that I was already doing (posting that is), but after a while, the various hassles did not seem worth it to me, anymore... I felt that sometimes, I was worrying too much about getting paid properly and sometimes some of the controversy around some signature campaigns or even having to spend some additional time to follow some of the changes in the campaign or restrictions that they might impose regarding posting. The ones that I was in did not tend to have too many quantity posting restrictions, but I have seen that some current signature campaigns have those, too. But I think that the sum of the matter is that I just did not want anyone second-guessing the contents of appropriateness of any of my posts, and there does tend to be a bit of politics with any contractual relationship like that or even the impression that I might leave as if I am independent in my thinking or not.
I am not opposed to other members getting involved in signature campaigns because it can be a kind of easy money if you are going to be posting anyhow, then it might just work better for some of the other members as compared with how my own feelings about my involvement evolved.
That's a very good point, I felt stressed even looking at the campaign requirements. Some of them are crazy, requiring a certain number of posts all above minimum character length + certain sections, etc. It seems like such a headache to me trying to keep track of all of that. I think for some people it's not really an issue but I don't like being forced to post in sections that I don't ever read, etc. I definitely agree with you that having a signature does bring more "scrutiny" to your posts and more people tend to question your content. It also seems like a lot of campaigns are somewhat "predatory" in their requirements and changes without proper notice + extremely convoluted guidelines which I definitely do not want to mess with. I've never been in a campaign so I can't really comment personally on the effects, but I've definitely seen a lot of the business. For me at least, I am hear because I enjoy learning and posting and I feel like being part of a campaign would make it feel like a "job" to me. I am here because I want to be, not because I need to meet a requirement. Sometimes I just like to take a break and it's nice not having any worries.
Just my thoughts, mainly wanted to highlight on some aspects I didn't outline before such as the "predatory behavior" signature campaigns have and the hassle they can become (making it feel like a job, etc.). There have been some more guidelines added for campaigns, but hopefully more will come to combat the new issues.
I am sure that participation in a signature campaign could go either way, especially if members already feel like the signature campaign does not really change what they were doing anyhow, and at first, it felt to me that I was not really changing very much, but after a while the signature campaigns kind of began to draw me down....
And of course, when BTC prices went shooting way up, I felt less compelled to stack some extra sats (and perhaps not being worth it to me).
When I first started participating in the forum, for a few years, I mostly only participated in the wall observer thread, which has largely been a bitcoin focused thread. Most of the time, I did not give two shits about the vast majority of other coins or even getting caught up in forum politics, but the longer that any member participates in the forum the more that s/he could get drug into other threads or even some of forum's politics and even learning about who some of the BIG players in forum politics are.
But yeah, the self-ish motive for most of my involvement in this forum has been to mostly concentrate my efforts on sharing information related to bitcoin.
Actually, there may be some members who actually believe that they want to get involved in signature campaigns, partly because until you reach a certain level of rank, you are largely excluded from a vast majority of signature campaigns, yet after you participate in signature campaigns for a while, you might realize, as efialtis was saying in his earlier post, that the signature campaigns might be way more work than they are worth (and sure some of the managers are a bit arrogant and not very gracious with their power.. which yeah starts to feel like a real job rather than a hobby and maybe all for measly peasly amounts of money or that sometimes they are changing their pay rates, too.. which can feel like it is ungrateful to the efforts of the signature campaign participants).