The Nature of Spam

[vesuvanprincess]

So I hope everyone will forgive me if this thread seams foolish to all of you but I simply must ask:

What is this evil thing called spam?

As odd as it may seam to some of you I have never frequented an internet message board before Evony's little Off Topic Forum. I see many posts about it. I see people pining for the "good ol' days" of Evony of Yore as though spam was unheard of back then. If have seen some say spam is never OK. I have seen others call people out for spam in what appeared to be innocent posts to my untrained eye. I have seen mod posts saying that some spam is OK- as though there is a right kind and a wrong kind of it? The whole thing confuses me...

On one occasion (I will attempt to avoid specifics as I do not intend to begin a battle with anyone over this, only relate a point that has been bothering me) I was called out for creating a thread that was supposedly spam and yet I honestly had not thought it was such. What truly shocked me was that two posters, with a few thousand posts between them and whom appeared to be OT regulars, proceeded to leave dozens of messages at the end of my thread that were basically all repeating the same sentence and had the effect of totally derailing my thread. Nobody said "hey, that is spam."

There are those who posts multiple messages daily on every thread and hold conversations with one another and this appears acceptable in most cases. I begin to settle into our way of doing things here only to see another poster call this same behavior out as spam later on.

I swear, the entire concept of spam seams slippery to me. It seams ill defined and hard to pin down and I find myself totally clueless as to when a post I want to make will be considered spam and when it will be seen as a fair post.

I ask that all of you "old timers" here on the OT answer my question so that I can better know what it is you mean when you all call for a return of the "good ol' days."

Thanks

[Darkbrady]

It is slippery.
That's why it's against the rules altogether in the other sections; any spam is bad.
In OT it's more lax, but has defintely become worse recently.
This is due to abscence of Mods and people jus' not carin' anymore for w/e reason.
The self-moderation thing obviously isn't workin' as a lot of the regulars are veerin' into it pretty badly.

Acceptable spam would be a post that's off-topic, maybe light-hearted or has some kind of point to it, but otherwise spam.
Unacceptable spam (in my eyes) is things like someone appearin' in a thread for the first time and sayin' "I have nothin' to say about this". That's useless, a waste of a post, achieves absolutely nothin' other than bump their post count up.

[Rodri]

I will probably be hated for this, but some of the worst spammers are the first to call out others for spamming.
To me, posting "this is spam" or "stop spamming" is just another form of spam.

It's a fine line. Sometimes a thread almost demands to be derailed and spammed, by it's very nature. At other times it can be really annoying if you are trying to carry on a debate and a spammer keeps breaking the thread.

The very worst type of spam to me is when posters start holding a running conversation inside a thread or game that is totally off topic and just banal. I don't want to wade through pages of that sort of rubbish, trying to find a point where the original thread resumes.

Sometimes a funny picture or a line can break the tension and give everyone a laugh, so that's pretty harmless and usually allowed.

I wrote a similar post some time ago about SPAM (the meat product) vs spam (in the forums). I got told it was spam too, even though it was a half page long and was full of information and (I hope) some humour.

I think there will be some new mods very soon and the self-policing will vanish. In a lot of ways, it resembles bullying.

[FoxyBunny]

Typically, if a post has absolutely nothing of value to add to a conversation, I consider that spam. If a post intentionally derails a topic, that's spam. If an entire thread wanders around aimlessly without any actual topic, that would be spam. If it is a duplicate of another, existing thread, that's spam.

Here's an example: We've beaten the discussion of the Evony advertising campaign to death. We now know, and can categorically state, what every person here thinks about it. Great. Lovely. At this point, to start yet another thread about it would be absolute spam in my eyes, if not outright trolling or even instigation. It serves no purpose whatsoever and is highly unlikely to lead to any sort of reasonable discussion.

And yes, you are absolutely right that some of the same people who scream about spam are the worst spammers of them all. Some of these people feel the intense urge to jump into every single thread and post "OMG SPAM!" all over the place. No, it's not ok, and yes it drives me nuts.

One of the worst things I see is when someone new comes in here to ask a simple question or start up a topic, and their post is harmless. Perhaps it is spam, or maybe just doesn't belong in here, but by the time I see it, we've got three pages of people flipping out on the OP over it and spamming the poor thread to death.

Now, this is the Off-Topic section, and to be honest, I am pretty easygoing with regards to spam here. If you aren't hurting anyone, and you haven't ruined someone's discussion, I tend to let a lot of the spam go. We have to draw some lines or else the board would be unusable from all the spam threads, but we still offer a good bit of lenience here. If you want to truly understand spam, go to my "Behaviour out of control" thread and read everything after about page 3. lol The OT'ers spammed my poor thread to oblivion.

[Cringe]

If a post intentionally derails a topic, that's spam. If an entire thread wanders around aimlessly without any actual topic, that would be spam.

lol The OT'ers spammed my poor thread to oblivion.

Jus' wondering, why is that okay? :s

[PU239]

Jus' wondering, why is that okay? :s

no that wasn't okay, most of them got infractions, of course, trust me foxy really puts infractions, suspensions and bans, nobody will be spared.

[PU239]

foxy is right, and don't ask me why? I still have the infractions she gave me for spamming ^_^

and oh yeah nice sig, really really cute ^_^

[FoxyBunny]

Well, in that particular case I allowed it because my post had more to do with general hostility and misbehaviour than anything else. People here were turning on each other and breaking rules left and right and I wanted it to stop. They stopped. And in that thread, for the most part, they were NICE to each other. And they had fun. And there were no rule breaks! So I figure they got my point and that's enough for me.

As for the spam in general, we actually DO allow spam in this forum if it is contained. We provided a few places for it. The Convo thread and the Bar are the most notable examples of this. Neither has an actual topic, and neither does anything more than wander around aimlessly as people have fun and chitchat. That's fine with me. I just don't like when the spam roams outside and starts messing with every thread that actually has a purpose.

[Ashley39]

I really didnt know what it meant either. I knew what spam was to e-mails but not what discussion board spam was. Thanks for clearing it up

[Lord Arumen]

Want to know what isn't spam? Well, I hate to toot my own horn, but look at any post I have ever made. I always follow thread rules and try to post more than the 10 character limit.