I don't think the forum is in a unique situation here. Dead internet theory seems to be proving true in real time. I'm often frustrated by a lot of sites that have users posting / commenting. However, it's particularly bad here because users are actively paid to post.  

I think its time to crack down on signature campaigns. They've added a lot to the forum through its own economy, but the quality of the forum has taken a significant hit in terms of quality. I'm not sure the benefit of signature campaigns is outweighing the negatives any more. Whether that's significant restrictions or just outright removal. The latter, likely decreasing user count by a massive amount, although that might still be better than what we've got currently.

Of course, before signature campaigns were a thing, the forum had a less 'professional' feel, but more tightly knitted. I think we should try to sit in the middle of that, maybe leaning towards more personable going forward.

We are likely fighting a losing war. We have outdated software (which I quite like SMF) and a sort of out dated way of doing things. Forums aren't as popular as they once were. Reddit, Twitter and all those sites seem to be the more popular choice these days. I think signature campaigns have probably positively affected the forums relevancy. However, we've lost a significant amount of the quality. I guess the community has to ask themselves do we want low activity but absolute quality or high activity but extremely low quality. Potentially creating a community vote (which is open to manipulation), see where everyone stands and presenting that to theymos. Merit was a good introduction, but it doesn't address all issues.

I can't speak for all mods. However, I tend to go through my sections periodically (ideally daily but depends on real life commitments) that I'm a dedicated moderator in. If I had to estimate, my workload is probably 30% acting on reports and the remaining I've stumbled upon myself.

However, absolutely the more reports the better. I personally can't act upon a lot of the posts within Altcoin Discussion, and I do believe that needs a lot of cleanup. I'll have to dedicate some time to reporting there myself.

Personally, I don't think its a problem with newbies these days. There's enough patrollers that reports are dealt with swiftly. It's the users that have a bit of merit, maybe worked hard to get where they are, but now they're enrolled in signature campaigns they let that standard slip and just posting to earn a quick buck. Largely, regurgitated nonsense.

I don't think the forum is in a unique situation here. Dead internet theory seems to be proving true in real time. I'm often frustrated by a lot of sites that have users posting / commenting. However, it's particularly bad here because users are actively paid to post.  

I think its time to crack down on signature campaigns. They've added a lot to the forum through its own economy, but the quality of the forum has taken a significant hit in terms of quality. I'm not sure the benefit of signature campaigns is outweighing the negatives any more. Whether that's significant restrictions or just outright removal.

Of course, before signature campaigns were a thing, the forum had a less 'professional' feel, but more tightly knitted. I think we should try to sit in the middle of that, maybe leaning towards more personable going forward.

I can't speak for all mods. However, I tend to go through my sections periodically (ideally daily but depends on real life commitments) that I'm a dedicated moderator in. If I had to estimate, my workload is probably 30% acting on reports and the remaining I've stumbled upon myself.

However, absolutely the more reports the better. I personally can't act upon a lot of the posts within Altcoin Discussion, and I do believe that needs a lot of cleanup. I'll have to dedicate some time to reporting there myself.

Personally, I don't think its a problem with newbies these days. There's enough patrollers that reports are dealt with swiftly. It's the users that have a bit of merit, maybe worked hard to get where they are, but now they're enrolled in signature campaigns they let that standard slip and just posting to earn a quick buck. Largely, regurgitated nonsense.