Amazing. I never expected Off-Topic to have such an uproar.
Okay, then..
- I do agree that the "quick reply" box does seem to effect spamming to a small degree. Yes, people would of spammed before but now it is just a faster way of spamming. In another thread, there was even talk about how the "quick reply" box "taunted" users to spam. Still, it is a useful feature and we all knew some members would abuse it.
- When I came to this board two years ago the requirements to get an avatar was simple. You had to have at least five hundred posts and they could not be spam. What this meant, is over the span of your five hundred posts the moderators would watch you and decide if you was spamming,etc. This was the best method. The problem was that we kept gaining more members and they started to reach five hundred posts quicker and quicker. There was simply no way the moderators / admin\'s could keep up with each and everyone person and their quality of their posts. Thus, we have the reward system now. Which brings us to a completely new problem. Now that we have rewards that are enabled, people are quicker to spam to get that new elite custom user title or color. We can\'t go back to the way we was, because with the board actually having life to it know, there is no way the Mods /Admins could keep with every new request for a new custom user title. So, what do we do?
I for one have always felt that avatars, user titles and special colors should go to people picked by the moderators / admin\'s. The criteria for this would be if the member had been with the board for a specfic amount of time, had a certain amount of posts and was judged to be a respectul and quality member who added actually thought to threads in this forum. I wish that this is the way we would of went with the reward system, but now it is too late. MM has already established the newest reward system and there is no turning back. We can\'t remove everyone\'s custom title , color or avatar and start over. Maybe freezing posts count is the best way, but we have already tried that.
There really is no clear cut way to fix this problem.
- A lot of you was not here when Off-Topic wasn\'t as lively but had more quality posts. It was a completely different time when people like WelTall, Datamage , SublimeSjg and OnlineRat was around. Things change and we have a new group now. We also have moderators for this new group, people like Luke and MM have been very relaxed about the spamming going on as they truly believe that some spamming is good and it lets people cut loose. Obviously they was right to a degree, as we have a lot more members now than we ever have. The problem is, I think they may of spoiled you guys. Now anytime a mod closes a thread like Ooseven or SoulGrind everyone starts to throw a fit. But yet, when the topic comes up about how extreme the spamming has become you all scream for us to moderate more.
Another reason I think you all may be "spoiled" is because the spam has changed. It use to be just cutting loose and having fun. Now it has risen to a level of pointless that is absurd. Luckee, do we need a thread where the topic starter message has a link to that same exact thread? TheONeBillyGun, do we need a thread about your new sponge? Then there is the topic like "blah blah ..". Shockwave, was it really nessecary to posts 75 times in a row? The list goes on and on. Almost every regular in Off-Topic is guilty of this new kind of spam.
If we could somehow bring Off-Topic back to how it was per say two months ago, I think everything would be fine. Some of the older members would still not be completely content but it would be a lot easier to accept.
- As for splitting Off-Topic up, like we did Console Debating. This is a completely different enviroment. With Console Debating there was a nice size group of people that was tired of the mindless bashing and wanted a place to just discuss the latest developments in the industry without having to worry about a thread being ruined, so MM and Ryu decided to split it up. The key thing is we had a nice size group and the attitude in each forum is completely different.
If we split up Off-Topic into two different forums it wouldn\'t be near as succesful. Off-Topic would be almost completely dead and the new forum would be filled with spam and the worst kind of spam, because that is what people would be expected to post in there. We would not be encouraging our members to actually improve their posts, instead we would just be giving them a new place to spam.
Then there is the problem with how that would be moderated. It was a lot more clear cut with the split for Console Debating, as we decided Console Discussion would just be a more strict version of Debating. With an OFF-TOPIC split and place for people to spam, there is no clear cut way to moderate it. If a thread was closed in the new forum people would throw a fit and this whole situation would be back. Not to mention I\'m positive the spam would overflow there serving to only take up more server space.
Finally, we would also have the problem that newbies would simply go to this forum and spam so that they could get their picture, custom text and etc. At least in Off-Topic the moderaters can somewhat moderate the board.
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Every member is responsible for their posts and if you think that your post is useless spam, than why post it? People , use common sense before you post. It is the quickest and most effective way to get rid of some of this spam. No one is asking you all to become straight laced and serious. No one is asking for you to quick posting jokes and everything, just don\'t go overboard. I\'m sure each and every member on this board can tell the difference in how the spam was two months ago and how it is now. We can still have fun in Off-Topic and have pointless conversations, without saying things like "yea, i agree" or "lemon soothiessss".
