Brainstorming ideas: How to combat spam in the forum?

[rekter 8129]

Purpose of this topic is to use our hive mind to come up with some original solutions, on how to deal with the low quality spam from low quality accounts, bots, reputation cheaters and double accounts. Any viable solutions that we come up with, we could polish and pass to admins as suggestions.

 

If you don't know why combatting spam is important, i'll give you 2 reasons.

 

1. Every scammer account that is getting away with money, is basically getting away with your money, because it's meant for active participating members and cheaters are most likely using their talk tokens to dump your talk token value.
2. Google rankings. If we have high quality original content we are getting higher google ranking, adding more value to this forum, making it more appealing to advertisers and it would bring us legitimacy that would most likely benefit us financially as well in the end. 

 

So, i'll be happy to hear any ideas. What would be a meaningful solution for combatting spam and what would be too much for you?

 

Phone number verification? a KYC? More moderators or assistant moderators?

 

 

Edit 10.1: I will read every message in this thread and give cheaters and rephrasing bots -5 and put them top of my next reports. Not that they would be reading, but if you were wondering why some texts are getting -5, they are most likely rephrasing earlier answers.

Edited January 10, 2021 by rekter

[tienda 8776]

Interesting topic to exchange our ideas about helping this forum combat spammers. My opinion to combat the spammers in this forum, is avoiding them at the first time when they join this forum. As example and idea, the topic creation should be limited, newbies should first complete their 100 posts, to start doing topics.

[rekter 8129]

27 minutes ago, tienda said:

Interesting topic to exchange our ideas about helping this forum combat spammers. My opinion to combat the spammers in this forum, is avoiding them at the first time when they join this forum. As example and idea, the topic creation should be limited, newbies should first complete their 100 posts, to start doing topics.

That could be a start. But very few of any of the accounts i've reported have written any topics. They mostly have copy pasted or rephrased earlier answers. Or sometimes are making keyword based computer generated jargon hoping that no one will catch them.

 

Low quality topic posters are easier to spot.

[Dorjoy12 8962]

1 hour ago, rekter said:

Phone number verification? a KYC? More moderators or assistant moderators?

I do not think so that our forum should have more moderator  but it would be More  good if forum  authorities  bring out a reaction  giving bot  to useful  post only instead of giving react by members  because  mostly  time members  cheat but bot Won't  be cheater..  You know  about read cash Forum?  There has bot to tip money to good member  writing.. 

[Tehreem0 28]

1 hour ago, rekter said:

Purpose of this topic is to use our hive mind to come up with some original solutions, on how to deal with the low quality spam from low quality accounts, bots, reputation cheaters and double accounts. Any viable solutions that we come up with, we could polish and pass to admins as suggestions.

 

If you don't know why combatting spam is important, i'll give you 2 reasons.

 

1. Every scammer account that is getting away with money, is basically getting away with your money, because it's meant for active participating members and cheaters are most likely using their talk tokens to dump your talk token value.
2. Google rankings. If we have high quality original content we are getting higher google ranking, adding more value to this forum, making it more appealing to advertisers and it would bring us legitimacy that would most likely benefit us financially as well in the end. 

 

So, i'll be happy to hear any ideas. What would be a meaningful solution for combatting spam and what would be too much for you?

 

Phone number verification? a KYC? More moderators or assistant moderators?

Cause I think that we would have good vocabulary. And thus we can be saved from these spam things. And spamming is the main reason that our posts are being deleted by days and days. So that this strategy can save us from everything.

[rekter 8129]

46 minutes ago, Dorjoy12 said:

I do not think so that our forum should have more moderator  but it would be More  good if forum  authorities  bring out a reaction  giving bot  to useful  post only instead of giving react by members  because  mostly  time members  cheat but bot Won't  be cheater..  You know  about read cash Forum?  There has bot to tip money to good member  writing.. 

Ok, i googled it, i guess that could be one way, but it would need work. I mean this forum already has the algorithm that removes suspected cheaters from the payment program, and still cheaters are getting trought the cracks.

 

And a bot doesn't really know if the post is good or not. It only checks them superficially and not every quality message necessarily fits to the algorithm. I don't really know the success rate of the read cash bot but it isn't open source and admins would need to build our own. And like i said, they are basically doing it with their algorithm now.

[Froshk 1828]

4 hours ago, rekter said:

So, i'll be happy to hear any ideas. What would be a meaningful solution for combatting spam and what would be too much for you?

 

Phone number verification? a KYC? More moderators or assistant moderators?

Well the idea is good, but the issue is that it will make registration a bit harder, and spammers will even find a smarter way of getting into the forum, 

Also, private information could also be stolen all in the name of combating spam, which i believe will make the solution more worst than the problem 

Edited January 9, 2021 by Froshk

[Syedbesharat 5423]

3 hours ago, rekter said:

I will be happy to hear any ideas. What would be a meaningful solution for combatting spam and what would be too much for you?

 

Phone number verification? a KYC? More moderators or assistant moderators?

I have seen many good topics are filled with repeating answers and with not constructive replies. The more it hurt when they do the plagiarism as well. For this many of members have done a remarkable job in cleaning them by reporting. But they are not stopping by. This is increasing mods job at the forum. Their for I would like to suggest this why not forum choose some members from forum and give them task for the week or day to hunt down all the spamming copied, useless topics and multiple account holders. Their would be team of two members who have one section under their and they have to find specifically the copied post on that section and they will be rewarded from forum for that. This will make with happy the members and forum. The will submit the report daily, weekly to mods and the mods will easily check them either those are copied or not. 

[Jromz 2158]

Good initiative, mate and the reasons you provide are strong enough for us to take urgent action to fight against spam. My idea would be to pay careful attention to the topics we read every day to detect any spam content, I  know it is difficult but if we do our best focusing our attention in this task and we are a good number of members scouting for spam, we could at least detect those members that can be regarded as spammers.

[Mahmod aljarah 1383]

I suggest that the laws be amended so that each new member must first participate 100 times in the existing posts without writing a new post in order to understand how this forum works ... then allow him to participate one day until he becomes a member .. and thus we will benefit that we will not see duplicate posts or outside The topic, short, or violating. The duty of the forum is that we report any duplication or spam.

[rekter 8129]

36 minutes ago, Jromz said:

Good initiative, mate and the reasons you provide are strong enough for us to take urgent action to fight against spam. My idea would be to pay careful attention to the topics we read every day to detect any spam content, I  know it is difficult but if we do our best focusing our attention in this task and we are a good number of members scouting for spam, we could at least detect those members that can be regarded as spammers.

Funny that you mentioned, there are already 2 copy paste / rephrasing accounts in this thread, and i am assuming more will join later, i'll report their whole accounts later. For now i am just giving those -5.

 

1 hour ago, Syedbesharat said:

 I would like to suggest this why not forum choose some members from forum and give them task for the week or day to hunt down all the spamming copied, useless topics and multiple account holders. Their would be team of two members who have one section under their and they have to find specifically the copied post on that section and they will be rewarded from forum for that. This will make with happy the members and forum. The will submit the report daily, weekly to mods and the mods will easily check them either those are copied or not. 

Rewards would probably incentive people hunting down accounts. I am not sure if we would need even moderator rights after that. Moderator rights would make us more effective as it takes time to prove cheaters. I have like around 100 account backlog bookmarked ready for reporting but i can't seem to find time to process it. And the list is growing all the time. For every account i report i am finding at least 3 suspicious accounts more.

 

I am doing it because it serves everyone having them gone. But it's hard and time consuming. And those bots don't get tired. However i perfectly understand if admins are careful giving moderator rights for just anyone.

 

3 hours ago, Tehreem0 said:

Cause I think that we would have good vocabulary. And thus we can be saved from these spam things. And spamming is the main reason that our posts are being deleted by days and days. So that this strategy can save us from everything.

 

I am sorry, what is your strategy? I didn't catch that.

 

 

[baghdada 43]

First, thanks for this topic.
Secondly, I think that one way to combat cheaters is to file a complaint against anyone suspicious of suspicion

[Barbarellah 2225]

I support the idea that we have to ensure that only useful content is posted on the forum. Apart from conducting a personal verification, I believe that we should all be committed to punishing spam through our reactions since I believe that it is the main tool we have to act. If we get a bad publication that breaks with the rules of the forum, we can make a call for attention and if we see that the member continues to make the mistake, we could publish a list so that we all qualify it negatively as a punishment. On the other hand, the increase in the number of moderators would also be a good option.

[kyoukage01 3181]

On 1/9/2021 at 11:23 PM, rekter said:

Every scammer account that is getting away with money, is basically getting away with your money, because it's meant for active participating members and cheaters are most likely using their talk tokens to dump your talk token value.

This one, I am aware of. That is the reason why I have been reporting a lot of violators especially now that payment for posts have been switched to TALK tokens: too many shitposters dumping tokens irresponsibly will hurt the token's value eventually.

 

Two major actions have been done so far to combat these pests: the removal of both the double payment system and then the removal of payment for giving ratings. But these measures also hurt the other members who would have deserved those things otherwise.

 

So we have a need for measures that will curb the problem while having a minimal effect on legitimate members.

 

On 1/9/2021 at 11:23 PM, rekter said:

Phone number verification? a KYC? More moderators or assistant moderators?

Phone number verification and KYC both will require additional resources and manpower to maintain it, and I doubt the higher-ups would be willing to spend even more on this forum just for those. And personally, the only KYC I am willing to give is to the companies that is bound within the borders of my own country (so I can sue them for trust violations), so no thanks to that suggestion. Expense-wise, hiring additional moderators that will focus more on enforcing the rules of this forum by catching spammers would be a cheaper and more sensible choice: only a few couple of people or so for both the English and Russian subforums each should be enough.

 

On 1/10/2021 at 4:32 AM, rekter said:

Rewards would probably incentive people hunting down accounts. I am not sure if we would need even moderator rights after that. Moderator rights would make us more effective as it takes time to prove cheaters. I have like around 100 account backlog bookmarked ready for reporting but i can't seem to find time to process it. And the list is growing all the time. For every account i report i am finding at least 3 suspicious accounts more.

At least one moderator has already expressed support for this suggestion.

https://cryptotalk.org/topic/165-cryptotalk-forum-what-to-add/?do=findComment&comment=7355274

What I am afraid of with this one is that there is definitely going to have an increase in false reports, with members accusing each other over the basest of reasons just to gain those rewards. That is probably one of the reasons why this suggestion is currently shelved.

 

Edited January 11, 2021 by kyoukage01

[Honny143 13612]

@rekter  I don't think phone verification are kyc is the better solution to stop spammers, because now a time buy a smart phone and submit  documents for kyc is not big issue for spammers

So I think increase moderators are one of our member @Syedbesharat  advice select few of our forum good members, and give them this spammers detected job and pay them their daily rewards for this work its good option, because humans works more accurately.

Edited January 10, 2021 by Honny143

[NomanAshraf787 69]

19 hours ago, rekter said:

Purpose of this topic is to use our hive mind to come up with some original solutions, on how to deal with the low quality spam from low quality accounts, bots, reputation cheaters and double accounts. Any viable solutions that we come up with, we could polish and pass to admins as suggestions.

 

If you don't know why combatting spam is important, i'll give you 2 reasons.

 

1. Every scammer account that is getting away with money, is basically getting away with your money, because it's meant for active participating members and cheaters are most likely using their talk tokens to dump your talk token value.
2. Google rankings. If we have high quality original content we are getting higher google ranking, adding more value to this forum, making it more appealing to advertisers and it would bring us legitimacy that would most likely benefit us financially as well in the end. 

 

So, i'll be happy to hear any ideas. What would be a meaningful solution for combatting spam and what would be too much for you?

 

Phone number verification? a KYC? More moderators or assistant moderators?

In my opinion there is at least one verification which is must for all.

[Zotac Rx470 27]

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[rekter 8129]

7 hours ago, kyoukage01 said:

Phone number verification and KYC both will require additional resources and manpower to maintain it, and I doubt the higher-ups would be willing to spend even more on this forum just for those. And personally, the only KYC I am willing to give is to the companies that is bound within the borders of my own country, so no thanks to that suggestion. Expense-wise, hiring additional moderators that will focus more on enforcing the rules of this forum by catching spammers would be a cheaper and more sensible choice: only a few couple of people or so for both the English and Russian subforums each should be enough.

Yeah, I was just throwing in ideas, and i would be hesitant to do kyc myself, and there are probably ways to go around phone verfications, at least that what i suspect when i look the amount of telegram scammer accounts.

 

I am pretty sure that they could handle hiring manpower when you look how much money they are giving away. Just the amount they gave away in btctalk signature campaign alone when they were advertising this place in there was astounding.

 

7 hours ago, kyoukage01 said:

What I am afraid of with this one is that there is definitely going to have an increase in false reports, with members accusing each other over the basest of reasons just to gain those rewards. That is probably one of the reasons why this suggestion is currently shelved.

 

Good point, i didn't even thought of that.

 

Maybe they should start with trusted designated reporters that have already done this for a while. And after that there should be some sort of test to get in or they had to be voted in. But if this happens there should also be a private section where designated cheater hunters could discuss tactics without getting interrupted by unrelated content.

[Dorjoy12 8962]

21 hours ago, rekter said:

And a bot doesn't really know if the post is good or not. It only checks them superficially and not every quality message necessarily fits to the algorithm

 About bot work its totally true that bot will only look for those post which contain 100 character  not information but forum authorities  should involve a bot which  will get Input information  about a topic as well  if any member  make comment related with the topic then plus react while if any member  make comment that already  another  member  write then the message should be hidden  automatically .. 

[Syedbesharat 5423]

 

8 hours ago, Honny143 said:

 

@Syedbesharat  advice select few of our forum good members, and give them this spammers detected job and pay them their daily rewards for this work its good option, because humans works more accurately.

If we implement the phone verification system which is could be hacked and many people will try to register as many as they can. Because after the registration forum would gladly reward all members. So this isn't good idea. 

Thank you for appreciation, I have notice we all members need to do cleaning and help mods ,many of members were doing and seriously it's not an easy job I personally go from 1St to last page to find the plagiarism posts and make sure after reading again and again. Then check the user profile and make 100% sure his is doing wrong. Then I submit my post ,their for we need humans for this who work with forum rules and don't let the spammers, scammers and cheaters get away with our reward. 

[kyoukage01 3181]

18 hours ago, rekter said:

I am pretty sure that they could handle hiring manpower when you look how much money they are giving away. Just the amount they gave away in btctalk signature campaign alone when they were advertising this place in there was astounding.

They have the money, but whether or not they are willing to spend it to those suggestions are another matter entirely. We could have had a few more moderators back when this forum was in infancy, for example. They even could have hired more, even if it they're part-time/temporary help, back in October during the DLRS airdrop; there would have been less headache for us. But they didn't.

 

18 hours ago, rekter said:

Maybe they should start with trusted designated reporters that have already done this for a while. And after that there should be some sort of test to get in or they had to be voted in. But if this happens there should also be a private section where designated cheater hunters could discuss tactics without getting interrupted by unrelated content.

Good idea, but wouldn't this forum be accused of bias favoring certain members though if this was the case? And why not turn them into moderators too while we're at it? 😁

 

... ... ...

 

My suggestion of increasing the required first posts to 200 before payments is still pending.

https://cryptotalk.org/topic/55628-dialogue-with-the-administration/?do=findComment&comment=9804031

 

There is also the suggestion of payments based on rank. It would have gone like this:

• Junior member with 100 useful posts = 10 TALK tokens per post unlocked
• (Normal) member with 500 useful posts = 50 TALK tokens per topic unlocked
• Full member rank = BTC payments unlocked
• Senior member rank = 1 TALK tokens per giving ratings unlocked

... or something like that. I can no longer remember which member/s gave which suggestions above first. Spammers will have a difficult time unlocking all the payment systems with this, they'll be shot down first before they do so.

 

Edited January 11, 2021 by kyoukage01

[Whited35 15285]

Following things can be considered to to combat against spam and low quality posters on forum that I have been frequently shouting ! 

• Reputation-based BTC payments should be immediately stopped because even existing old members started to create multi accounts to spam reputation to expect full payments. Don't laugh, I can see them replying even to your this topic. Unfortunately, they have not even realized their mistake after the last payment disconnection. 
• Reward system should be reviewed by administration, I propose activity based reward system. No payment for all and any sort of participants. Check this report , a scammer already managed to drain a huge amount by using his shill accounts and copied same posts everywhere. 
• KYC verification can be considered for high reward gaining members. Those who do not pass KYC, they are supposed to receive less reward even by completing the same amount of tasks.
• Extra rewards to the spam fighters will save an excessively draining amounts from scammers.

[Cryptotalk01 117]

@kyoukage01 I really like this your suggestion because it will also encourage members to work in a positive way so that they will get to a higher rank in the forum also and when there is difference in payment then members will know that the level varies.

[rekter 8129]

2 hours ago, kyoukage01 said:

 

Good idea, but wouldn't this forum be accused of bias favoring certain members though if this was the case? And why not turn them into moderators too while we're at it? 😁

 

But for a long time now literally everyone had equal opportunity to help moderators by reporting cheaters and making this a better place for us all. Not everyone wanted to participate.

 

Upgrading to moderators would work, but i am guessing that they would want to be careful who to promote. Power corrupts and goes to head easily. People could turn trigger happy with their new powers.

2 hours ago, kyoukage01 said:

 

There is also the suggestion of payments based on rank. It would have gone like this:

• Junior member with 100 useful posts = 10 TALK tokens per post unlocked
• (Normal) member with 500 useful posts = 50 TALK tokens per topic unlocked
• Full member rank = BTC payments unlocked
• Senior member rank = 1 TALK tokens per giving ratings unlocked

I am liking this idea of unlocking features by rank especially for btc. Something like this could really work if people were reporting accounts actively. And if cheaters would keep getting trough they could always just rise the rank for it.

 

2 hours ago, Whited35 said:

• Reputation-based BTC payments should be immediately stopped because even existing old members started to create multi accounts to spam reputation to expect full payments. Don't laugh, I can see them replying even to your this topic. Unfortunately, they have not even realized their mistake after the last payment disconnection. 

Yeah, i agree, btc for reputation points system is being constantly abused. But i am starting to think that @kyoukage01 is on to something with his idea of unlocking btc payments. In that way reputation points wouldn't necessarily be even needed.

 

And man there's a lot of rephrasing bots replying to this thread already. Well at least i know they are all getting caught. :)

 

2 hours ago, Whited35 said:

• Reward system should be reviewed by administration, I propose activity based reward system. No payment for all and any sort of participants. Check this report , a scammer already managed to drain a huge amount by using his shill accounts and copied same posts everywhere. 

Woud this be activity system be similar to kyouage's rank/unlock system?

 

2 hours ago, Whited35 said:

• KYC verification can be considered for high reward gaining members. Those who do not pass KYC, they are supposed to receive less reward even by completing the same amount of tasks.

Interesting approach. This could work, and also would keep people most likely happy if kyc wasn't in any way mandatory.

2 hours ago, Whited35 said:

• Extra rewards to the spam fighters will save an excessively draining amounts from scammers.

Yeah, this i fully agree with. But like kyouage said, it cold create a huge flow of false reports. I am not sure if that would be a huge problem but it's a good point. That's why i was thinking of designated moderator assistants.

Edited January 11, 2021 by rekter

[Mohammadmohd 206]

I hope there are solutions to combat cheaters and double account holders, I hope managers take more measures to achieve justice and ensure everyone adheres to the rules.