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Re: "Posts That Pay" Forum Anti-Spam System Proposal

@adam hmm il wait for some others to chime in... Either way I don't think this should be a top priority right now, there are other more immediate things that should be worked on once the blog updates are done, like user profiles and a bunch of other stuff on the forums (like sub forums I mentioned).

solves a lot of our problems

What are some of the problems it solves besides deterring spam?

Re: "Posts That Pay" Forum Anti-Spam System Proposal

Some issues I see with it:

• Seems pretty complicated and a pretty big time investment just for combating spam (which is annoying, but not really overwhelming right now)
• I think in practice, if people have to go through the process of signing up for an account, creating a wallet and verifying their address, obtaining and spending some LTBC or whatever other tokens we accept just to post on the forums.. that's already quite a few layers of spam deterrence, so there would rarely be extra credits from removed posts to give back to people as per your formula
• If there is a free section that anyone can join and post in, then we still end up dealing with occasional spam regardless
• Would having a cost associated with every post cause people to just post less and less people participating, or would it produce higher quality posts? doesn't it conflict with Proof of Participation? 1 posting credit is likely quite a bit more than you get from the PoP points when making a post.
• The planned upvote/downvote system will introduce some user level moderation and also compliment the existing PoP system.

IMO this seems like something that would be neat as a sub community via a private TCA board - although that won't be very doable until we have some more features like sub-forums.

Re: "Common", "Un-Common" and "Rare" Token Classifications

Makes sense. Makes me think of a cool game using tokens and TCA actually. "collectable trading coins" instead of trading cards, and a game where you can use them to compete against other people. Basically MTG or Pokemon or w/e but on the internet :p send in 0.01 BTC to get a "booster pack" of 10 random tokens representing different powers or monsters, with a chance to get rare or super rare ones. Log in to the games website or app, link your address to it and compete against people to earn reward points which you can redeem for prizes (or sell). I'd play that :)

Re: Need help setting up a Solr search server?

@faceface OK, I can work with it as is, but for convenience, can you implement a '/replies' end point?

the /threads/{thread ID} endpoint provides both thread data and the list of replies. e.g https://letstalkbitcoin.com/api/v1/forum/threads/need-help-setting-up-a-solr-search-server

Re: Possible Solution to the spam problem

@pooktwo Well for the challenge question you might want to think about making it random addition questions like seven minus two to not detract non crypto enthusiasts.

With our private forums we send some people that way so they can access. Now noted that many of them are bitcoin users but we may have some that would not know the answer. Also if its the same answer could a bot just figure that out?

Yeah, good points, I will probably end up making it a random math question or w/e instead. just experimenting for now.

Re: Possible Solution to the spam problem

Updates from the battlefront:

• New accounts now must be registered for at least an hour before they can post at all in the forums. Minor inconvenience.. we'l see how it goes
• Added "honeypot" fields to login and registration to capture any bots (if you see them, just refresh a couple times to clear your stylesheet cache). Honeypot logins are blocked and honeypot registrations are allowed through, but marked as spam accounts.
• stopforumspam.com database check no longer blocks the accounts, lets them through but flags as spammer
• Added a "challenge question" to account registration "Who created the first version of bitcoin?" should be obvious to anyone even remotely interested :)

Random easter egg: add "?trollVision=1" at the end of a forum URL and you can see posts from shadowbanned spam accounts (this is something random I put in forever ago actually). So far none really because we have just been deleting most of it

Re: Possible Solution to the spam problem

@adam Had to clean out five this morning which is about the same as yesterday morning, also the spam is posted like 20 minutes apart so I suspect it is being made by hand.

god damn, starting to think it has to be one of those chinese spammer sweatshops or something... looks like they have changed tactics and are not using accounts flagged on that stopforumspam site, or maybe they are just trying a bunch of accounts until one works? Im going to try changing it so instead of just outright blocking them, it will let them in but flag them as a troll / shadow banned account. Also thinking of making it so you cant make any posts until your account is at least an hour old or something. Seems like the solution at the moment is to make it as much of a pain in the ass as possible to create and post with several accounts

The post credits idea is interesting, but I think at that point we might as well just have a general account registration fee (even if its like the Address Manager page where its just "send us something, anything!"). Should have roughly the same effect in regards to spam etc. and is less confusing for people :p Also the PoP system kind of does the same thing as what you are describing, except I guess the main thing is there isn't that upfront cost. i.e when a post is downvoted or buried by a mod as spam it negatively effects your PoP score and thus raises the weekly rewards of everybody else. But then again the spam accounts lately aren't ones which are opting into rewards program and trying to farm LTBC..

tl;dr going to try a few more things again to make it more frustrating for them and see what happens

Re: Possible Solution to the spam problem

@pooktwo Damn... So they are working you guys now huh? I figured it was a random spammer as its never BTC related, except that damn stellar spammer......

No idea lol and yeah, those stellar spammers are kind of bizarre