Community is being overrun by spam.

With regards to spoilers in the EUC and SWC we keep everything spoiler coded for two weeks after the release of a new film and that seems to generally work well. Of course y'all are trying to be less like SWC so...

 

Regarding spam threads:

On a previous forum, which I was a moderator part of, we had a sub-section for the general chat area which was for more or less 'spam/game threads'. In the long run, it actually helped to cut down on the spam threads. We also would lock those threads, which had no posts, after a month.

Might be something worth looking into?

 

Pretty sure we had a Games/Census forum but it was folded into Community when we gained the tagging ability. Same with Amph and Senate.

 

Is it possible to separate again or would it create too many problems for Community section?

 

That would really be up to the forum mods. Physically separating the threads would be fairly easy but it would be a step back, in my opinion. If I remember correctly we combined them because smaller forums weren't getting much traffic.

 

Ah, I see.

Have you considered allowing only mods to create the spammy type threads? I know it would be rather control freakish, but it might stem the tide and make it more manageable (I say that as someone, who has authored several large spam threads)

 

An alternative might be that regular users can start the threads but only with permission from a forum mod. SW Community use that approach for fan club and game threads and it seems to work pretty good.

 

I would highly recommend that approach.

 

So, pernicious spam or good fun? Asking honestly.

 

Very salacious and can easily turn quite toxic.

 

Oh Definitly Spam. And that’s coming from someone who actually likes these types of threads.

 

Yeah, it's a spam thread.

 

The battle threads are JCC events that get people excited and engaged. They're participatory. Friends and enemies are made. There's actually people going back and forth with some sort of goal. It's much more of a group thing than random spam into the void. There's a communal feel to it.

And I say this as someone who doesn't participate in the survival threads and doesn't care for them. I can see the difference. It's the difference between a royal rumble and...a bunch of people saying random things at each other, with no actual dialogue between each other. It's the difference between family game night and fridge poetry magnets.

It's spam, but the kind of spam that brings people together. Or makes them enemies for life.

 

Sorry are we just going to gloss over a mod admitting to dereliction of duty here? They just avoid threads in the forums they're supposed to be moderating because they don't want to be spoiled? Maybe don't accept the responsibilities of a mod if you cannot handle them.

 

When I was mod in the Amp, I got spoiled on so much **** because I read every single post in the forum. That's not exactly realistic when the forum is large and/or moves quickly though. I, for one, don't see a problem with too much spam. I still roll my eyes at parody threads and never open them, but how much time does it take to scroll past three or four threads?

I would highly argue against viewing things like What's the Last Movie/Book/Album or whatever as spam threads. Those have a lot of great content and discussion and I'm not saying that just because I like to post reviews in them myself. I do tend to find myself posting in a few threads over and over, like the U.S. Politics thread and the Movie thread and the Gun Control thread, etc. But the presence of other threads that I'm going to scroll right by isn't a problem for me at all.

And, look, depending on how you define spam, I'm all for it occasionally. I recall very shortly after the move and Amp getting rolled back into JCC, me and whatever alias crem was using at the time just derailing the Last Movie thread for a whole page by acting foolish about . . . God, I don't even know what, but I just remember thinking, "Ah, if this is what rolling Amp back into Community is going to beget, then I'm all for it." And I wouldn't want anything to discourage the massive Slowpoke debates in the superhero threads; I guess some people hate them, but I get a tremendous amount of joy from them. But, you know, I just try to be easy going around here now; I like having strong personalities around and a wide variety of posting styles banging up against each other. I tried having legit stress over this place and it broke me; I just hang around to have as much fun of as many different kinds with as many different people as possible now.

@Boba Nekhbet

 

Having just visited that thread and read through it......I would say it is good fun. You have people posting. It's nonsense. But nonsense can be fun and lead to some wildly awesome ideas. No one would post there if they were not having fun.

 

Something in between I guess? You could argue it's not spam since it requires some amount of creativity as opposed to just constantly posting "Water, milk, coffee, etc."

 

So what, locked only on weekdays?

 

You may be onto something here....

 

As I said before, when I moderated on another forum, we clamped down on spam threads to a) encourage members to post in a more discussion based manner and b) stop accounts, which purely just stuck to spam threads.

btw, I define a "spam thread" which encourages you to randomly post one of the following:

• Picture
• Video
• Words

I know it is a tad draconian @JoinTheSchwarz , but maybe prohibiting threads (which encourage random/meaningless content) might be an easy solution.

 

Hey, You have to think before you type in that thread.