Community is being overrun by spam.

No, that's not happening. Some of the best threads in Community history have been delightfully random. Might as well get rid of the "JCC" tag.

 

I see this place as a big party. There are different groups scattered around, having different conversations. Some of those conversations interest me, and I listen and join in. Other conversations are meaningless to me, and I move on to a different one. But I wouldn't tell anyone, "Your conversation is meaningless. Shut up and move on." As long as the topic doesn't cause bitterness or division, let it go.

 

I just don't get how the fact that there are five spam threads next to the thread I really like is in anyway drowning out the thread I like in the way that, to follow your example, loud music drowns out good conversation. I get that this is a serious reality for some people where spam threads existing next to threads they like makes them like the good threads less (or something akin to that), but I just don't understand it. If I'm way off on that, let me know; I'm being honest when I say I don't understand it.

Back in the old days, I feel like, maybe, yes, there was a justification for the Amp and the Arena, etc. because a thread might get pushed back ten or fifteen pages in the space of twenty-four hours and you really had to dig for things if you wanted to have a slower-paced thread. That was a practical reality. These days, not so much. I never go past page three these days, unless I've been gone for a week or something. Plus, we now have the tags. People, I think, rarely use them, but I think that in itself proves the point that good threads aren't being buried under an avalanche of spam. I kind of expected the tags to be a gamechanger; I think the fact that I have used them maybe twice in the last year speaks to the fact that the community has a good balance and we're not having those issues we had long ago.

All that, basically, to say that I feel like Sarge nailed it.

 

it's honestly not that big of a problem to wade through the stuff for me either. but that's because i'm here for hours, i can easily find threads that look interesting or that i want to take part in. i have enough time and patience and ultimately it's worth it to me to embark on that hunt through the forum for more thoughtful discussions, or ones that gel with my style and sense of humor. i think the point for me is more that not everyone has that amount of time and patience. one of my favorite posters said they often check the jc and just logoff immediately when they are confronted with a clutter of spammy threads. what i would like to avoid is losing more of my favorite posters for that reason. maybe that's not possible or realistic but it was at least worth it to me to re-open the discussion.

anyway, i was having fun with the "in my pants" thread and also the "combine two movie titles to make a new movie" thread, but i would classify those as spam. that why my preferred solution is re-splitting off a census/games forum that would encompass things like this. i enjoy a lot of these kinds of threads, i would like to continue taking part in them, i don't think preventing people from making them in the future is the ideal solution, but i think it's possible to find a way for them to continue and even grow while creating room for more thoughtful or original threads. maybe not enough people find it an important enough matter to move on, but that's why i wanted to talk about it.

 

A grey area in general. This is how a neutral, clueless user who has visited only two or three community threads since August or September 2015, and an admin of multiple websites, forums and social networking outlets sees it...

1. Who drinks what? Ummm, who cares? I'd just copy and paste the same thing over and over and we need to keep a credible reputation ratio, don't we?
   
   
2. The most recent thread the admin linked was pointless. Fun to do on chat, perhaps?
   
   
3. The Wacky News is where I get the content to scare people from.
   
   
4. The Thread Titles In Bed thread is incredibly creative. It's kind of cross-forum, encouraging that "forum hopping" thing from the guide.
   
   
5. Art, cute pics etc is what some folks who don't always log in (e.g. my mom) are there for.

This is what three other places I frequent have. "Forum games" subforums, where posts do not count towards an user's overall post count and reputation.

 

Although I agree that would be a good solution to stop people from inflating their post count. It might be hard to program that into the website.

 

Why does any of this matter?

 

I mean it doesn't same as any post on the forum "matters". To me, it's just do you want to scroll as much to see the threads that interest you in the JCC.

 

Essentially, it's either scroll OR click on a tag and then scroll less than you would have had to.

 

"Scrolling is hard!" [/barbievoice]

 

Explains the change over to codex from scrolls.

 

I do "in bed" with links in there for that very reason.

The art thread is there out of a habit I developed sharing pics with one person in a chat room though anyone could look of course. It turned into a daily hobby for myself. I noticed on other websites people had a general image thread with everything in there but I do like it separate from photo centric threads or joke image threads or else it just becomes a mish mash.

 

I actually quite like the Community section. Sure, this is a Star Wars forum. But I like to engage in conversations about different topics with the same people as well. And that's the only other place to do that here. Which is obviously why it's there, to allow for that. Even the non-serious "spam" kind of threads that don't have any deep discussion in them are perfectly fine with me. I feel like it would be really pretentious and unnecessarily strict for there to have to be this standard of posting for certain threads to stay in existence. I get that there are rules in other places to reduce redundant content. But especially in that area of the forum, there's got to be somewhere for people to goof off in addition to having non-Star Wars discussions.

 

This is not Community.

 

One person can't decide what is spam and what is not spam. I guess someone wanted to take everything they consider to be "spam" and put it into a section called "spam." That seems unfair. That sais, "My threads are serious and yours are just spam." Because it's unfair to label other people's conversations as spam, the solution is that everyone needs to navigate the boards, use the watch threads feature, or use the alerts feature.

@MotivateR5D4

 

I mean it's pretty fair to say that there are threads in community that are "spammy" say Free Association thread. Even the MCU survival battle could be considered spammy seeing as all you did was + that person or minus that person. I think people should just post in what they like and ignore the rest. What would be the best case scenario is if there was some type of feature where you could ignore a thread like you ignore a user.

 

True spam consists of click bait advertisements, fraudulent emails offering get rich quick ads, pyramid schemes, browser hijack pages, pop up screens. Notice how each of these are trying to sell you something.

There are game threads and free write threads on here that build creativity and inclusivity. Why are those spam? Those threads have a part in keeping discussion going.