Quote from: LoyceV on January 21, 2022, 04:34:01 PM

Quote from: PrimeNumber7 on January 21, 2022, 04:11:05 PM

Quote from: mocacinno on January 21, 2022, 09:50:05 AM

I have always felt that those bounty reports should have been done off-forum... Either on a dedicated site that was built for nothing but handling those bounty users, or maybe even in a google spreadsheet document directly.

They add page views, which affect forum ad revenue.

As far as I know, the forum doesn't need money and theymos doesn't care about ad revenue. I still don't get how "proof of authentication" isn't considered an insubstantial post, thousands of spambots post the same crap millions of times. What's the use of that?
At least it's mainly concentrated on a few boards, so it's quite easy to avoid.

The substance of a post is not limited to the text of the post; it includes the work that went into writing the text (potentially beyond typing the post).

For example, if you ask a question that requires a substantial amount of research, or computation, after conducting the required research, or performing the required calculations, I write a post with a one-word answer, my post would be substantial as a lot of work went into the post.

Similarly, the bounty hunters need to make social media posts on other platforms, and will post links to those posts as part of their bounty "reports". So there is some work that goes into the post that is not actually writing the post.

The forum does not need money, but that does not mean that the forum will not generate revenue. Theymos has certainly left a lot of money on the table by not allowing for targeted forum ads, nor "paid stickies" (the two are very similar), but I don't think it is accurate to say that theymos does not care about ad revenue. There is at least a minimal effort put into generating ad revenue for the forum.

As I mentioned in my previous post, and as you mentioned, the bounty reports posts really do not affect anyone negatively. There is an entire sub dedicated to what amounts to a place for bots to read other bots' posts, and in which there is no other conversations. So there isn't anyone trying to read conversations in the bounty sub.