Too much spam?

[Ferio]

The forum is getting very clustered with posts, nearing the point where I will have to stop reading it because there is too far between the posts that I really want to read, but maybe that is just me?

-Ferio

[Jekht]

I agree.. Im thinking of ways to limit it down...

ps ferio, are u referring to posts or threads? any examples would be good...

[rYugen]

yea i totally agree, especially the threads baku posted in =/

you shud get a shoutbox or something for the spam

[TrillianX]

My honest opinion, if you want to stop stuff like that, I believe the Forum description needs to be changed from "talk about whatever you like." to something else. But isn't that what the general section is for? We have sections for news, events, and other important stuff....... S I figured the general section was more for fun than important stuff. I could be wrong though....not the first time.

Trill

[Tytanya]

I dont think its so excessive to be a serious problem just yet, however an offtopic/humour forum might allow people to exert some discretion when posting to keep the threads differentiated etc.

Edit
yeah on posting i now see Trillians words and tend to agree perhaps more useful is to create a more specific forum for certain topics that may be lost amid the more light hearted posts and keep the General forum as just that?

[BakuraRyou]

Thanks ryu.

Well, one look at the Vector forum convinces me that there has never been spam here, ever.

[Loki]

Thanks ryu.

Well, one look at the Vector forum convinces me that there has never been spam here, ever.


./agree

[Veube]

What are you on about Ferio ?

There are 7 other sections in this Forum for important stuff. I see this part of the forum as a place to quite literally post ANYTHING. That includes spam (or pie, in DSs case).

In my opinion, as it's the most active place for posts, it allows people's personalities to come through. Without it, or even if it was limited, we'd all miss out on a huge chunk of what the place is about. Thats getting to know people better through their humour and the way they react to things.

I think if there's something in here that isn't going to interest me, I realise that pretty quickly and just move on.

I seriously don't see an issue here. Enlighten me. Whos voting for too much ?

[Ferio]

I am not just talking about the General Chat forum, or any specific threads, but about the individual posts.

The problem (that I see, if I am still allowed to have an opinion) is that there are far more users than there used to be, so the forum can not handle as much "spam" from each individual poster as when we were not as many.

I just think there are too many posts without any actual content, I am not saying there should be none, I am just saying that the current amount is too many for my personal taste (if personal taste is still allowed), if the majority is fine with the current amount of spam then more power to you, keep doing what you are doing, I would just like to state my opinion on the matter, I didnt think that would result in "What are you on about Ferio" response...

People seem to change a lot around here, well some do anyway, one day they are complaining about being bullied around the next day they are trying to be the bully; one day they are complaining about gankers the next day they are the ones ganking; one day they are complaining about spammers, the next day... you get the picture :?

-Ferio

[Jekht]

I dont think anyone was attacking you personally ferio, rather just disagreeing. Also everyone seems to be referring to threads whilst you refer to posts, which is slightly harder to moderate.

I agree with parts of what youv said mate. Perhaps you could help write up a posting guide, which we could both agree upon in a private forum.

One thing that seems to be helping, is that less people are posting 'lol' since a spamtastic game was introduced hehe :D

[Ferio]

Most people are apparantly fine with the way things are at the moment so no need for rules I guess. I will just have to learn to filter the spam faster. Threads like the Word Association Game are not the problem, it is posts like
yea i totally agree, especially the threads baku posted in =/

--------------------
Thanks ryu.

Well, one look at the Vector forum convinces me that there has never been spam here, ever.

------------------
./agree
that I find annoying to have to filter my way through, but as I said, the majority of the visiters here dont mind that sort of thing, so they shouldnt have to change.

-Ferio

[Veube]

Wait a sec Ferio. Whats wrong with that post ?

How would you suggest that Loki expresses her agreement with Bakuras post ? I would have thought thats exactly the way to do it ?


/disagree

[Dragonstorm]

I think what he was pointing to was the fact that it was not completely on topic serious discussion, and that in a serious thread like this, he would expect only serious discussion.

[Veube]

OK, I mis-interpreted that your post, Ferio. I see now, your quoting 3 separate posts within this thread.

However, I still don't see why they are not valid. They are the opinions of those individuals, each of whom has their own way of putting their opinion across. If that happens to be in a humourous or flippent way, then so be it. At least we know what they are thinking which is what forums are all about.

I was under the impression that spam posts are those which have pointless content and ultimately waste peoples time. So I guess you could argue that whether something is spam or not is a subjective thing, but IMO if there's an opinion in a post it has a point no matter what style is used in writing it.

[Jekht]

I think the problem is where to draw the line at spam.

Is a single word post, still spam if he quotes other posts? Im not too sure, but I think from now on anyone who posts

'lol'

should be dev slapped from here to japan and back ;D

[Ferio]

So I guess you could argue that whether something is spam or not is a subjective thing

Yes, it is a very subjective thing, that is why I created the poll, to see if I was the only one feeling the spam.

[Ferio]

Oh, and about the posts, the first one is (I hope) a joke, and this thread was clearly not made as a joke, making a joke about what I think is a serious problem is spam to me (and insulting on top of that). The other two posts just spins of the joke, and turns the discussion towards the ill state of the vector forums. And might I add that the fact that the Vector forums are worse doesnt justify anything, I find it troubling that the two forums can actually be compared.

Anyway, none of the 3 posts has anything to do with the thread I stated, it is 3 posts about jokes and the ill state of another forum.

-Ferio

[BakuraRyou]

The two forums can be compared due to the fact that they're based on essentially the same thing. That's my opinion anyway. Again, it's subjective.

The absolutely incomprehensible amounts of spam on the official Vector board is a disgrace, considering that there are already predefined spam boards there. The spam there is repetitive, annoying and more often than not, borderline retarded. The fact that intelligent and/or serious threads always degenerate into 'Blap' orgies is infuriating.
The spam here hardly even constitutes as spam, because most of it's so entertaining ;) I appreciate that sometimes the threads go off on a tangent, but a lot of the time said tangents can be very humourous and a good basis for another subject to be discussed. Obviously, not being a member of Causality, I can't post in the closed part of these forums, but the (admittedly few) posts I've made elsewhere have been (relatively) serious and off topic, and if you remember I myself made a thread a while back complaining about high amounts of spam on the forum.

Presumeably everyone here knows me ingame and knows what my attitude is like, and it seems to carry across here (with no conscious effort), so if I give a sarcastic response or whatever, it's nothing personal, it's just the way I am. Veube hit the nail on the head by saying everyone has their individual styles of posting. We nearly know without looking at the username who posted what (well, I do anyway). If my style of posting here irritates you, or anyone else for that matter, just let me know and I'll cut back on it. But 'Talk about whatever you like' is waaay too broad a subject to start complaining about spam.

[Tytanya]

I think the original query that needed clarification was to identify what aspects were causing a problem for those people looking in. If the problem is the individual posts then I think nothing can really be done. If the problem is that the threads are so numerous they make it difficult to differentiate one from another then a subgroup could be spilt into its own forum leaving the general forum more of less as is?

[Loki]

Anyway, none of the 3 posts has anything to do with the thread I stated, it is 3 posts about jokes and the ill state of another forum.

-Ferio

That is where you are wrong. In my opinion Bakura was obviously stating his opinion of no, there is not too much spam on these forums and pointed to the Vector forums as what he considered to have too much spam. I agreed with Bakura that these forums are just fine in reguards to spam. I'm sorry that my response was not 40 words long and waste everyone's time reading the whole thing when a single word was sufficient. Sorry if I am coming across a little harsh but just because my post was one word does not mean that it is spam.

[Ferio]

I dont think posting /agree is spam, in this case however, I read your post as meaning. "I agree, the Vector forums are much worse than ours" which is not the topic of the thread and therefor from my point of view spam.

It is like when I posted an RP thread on vector, and the only thing people would reply about was that it was too long, and how they would look forward to killing us RP'ers on the new Enumerator, if people dont have anything to say about the current topic they shouldn't reply to the thread.

Baku's thread is not that far of topic though, but I thought it was close enough to use an example.

-Ferio

[rYugen]

I dont think posting /agree is spam, in this case however, I read your post as meaning. "I agree, the Vector forums are much worse than ours" which is not the topic of the thread and therefor from my point of view spam.

It is like when I posted an RP thread on vector, and the only thing people would reply about was that it was too long, and how they would look forward to killing us RP'ers on the new Enumerator, if people dont have anything to say about the current topic they shouldn't reply to the thread.

Baku's thread is not that far of topic though, but I thought it was close enough to use an example.

-Ferio

jeet calm down this is a game and this forum is about a faction ingame and a game is meant to be fun so why shudnt the forums be funny as well?

i dont think you ppl really know what spam is...spamming is when you say the same all the time and annoy other people with that now dont tell me that the /agree annoyed you or something

just put a spam section in this forum and everything will be alright =/

[Dragonstorm]

One problem though, is that it's hard to always stay on topic with the original post. For example, you MissLoki and you Ferio are going off topic now. You are both talkin about something related to spam, but are no longer tsalking about "Is there too much spam?", but are now talking about "...", I dont even know anymore, something to do with arguing about whether a post is spam i guess, which this thread is turning into; "What is spam?", which you have I'm sure all discovered is more the real issue, as not everyone agrees on what spam is!
You can't expect people to make a thread every time they wander a little off topic, otherwise there would just be masses and masses of two or three post threads, which I guess wou be spam in a way, even if every single thread/post was about something serious. It's actually alot less spam, and alot easier to filter through imo, when most related threads are group into one original thread where people go a little off-topic. There must be something in that thread that lead the people there in the first place, so it's usually related to some degree! BUT yet another point is the word association thread, which shows an extreme version of how off-topic things can get (even though that is the point of the thread, so does not entirely reflect how a normal thread can sway from the op).

I'm just going to shut up now anyway, as I'm getting stuck in a loop.

[savity]

Well I voted no - because SPAM is not what we have here in any way, shape or form if you look at the traditional definitions.

SPAM is the unsolicited and bulk posting of messages that have no value to anyone. The origins of SPAM of course come from usenet where multiposting bots "spammed" messages across lots of newsgroups. The problem with this was mainly storage because they were sending multiple copies of the same message and the content was generally irrelevant for the majority (if not all) of the community.

When you come to smaller communities like this and to an extent the official forums, then the term SPAM only loosely applies and it's general defnition has been modified slightly to mean irrelevant posts with no value to the original discussion or community in general.

This is hard to define because every individual has different levels of interest. Some would say posting BLAP in a thread is not irrelevant or of no value because someone might actually enjoy reading it. It is, however, rude to the original poster and a community should enforce rules that allow the original discussion to stay loosely on topic and free from irrelevant replies. Sometimes a thread evolves (a bit like this one) and as long as the general themes are the same as the original post then it is a natrual and expected evolution.

Starting a new thread with just BLAP in it cannot be considered SPAM. Just ignore it if not interested in BLAPPING and it will soon move to the bottom of the pile. (I do wish to point out that it is my personal preference never to BLAP or get involved in the process of BLAPPING and it I use it as an example of what I consider the most irrelevant posting known to man)

I don't see a problem in anyone posting any topic they want in the general area. As we now have a roleplay/PET public area we can post more serious topics and discussions that are non-faction related in there.

Obviously all full faction members have access to the faction related discussion areas where we can talk away from prying eyes - and these should be kept clean of "general" topics.

Of course this being a community it is up to us all to respect each other's points of view. We may not agree with them but every point of view is valid (well unless you are discussing sport!!!)

As usual I'm rambling again so gotta stop here so avoid getting my words per post count in the thousands. One thing I don't ever think I'll be known for is pointless one word replies.

So.... Every new thread in the right place is valid - irrelevant responses to an original thread should be kept to a minimum - if a thread starts to go completely off topic - then maybe create a new post to carry on the discussion and leave the original thread to run it's natural course.

Phew......