badatprogrammingibe wrote:

54329 wrote:

badatprogrammingibe wrote:

What negative consequence does spam in the announcements forum have?

You like spam?

In general I do not approve of spam, however I am indifferent towards it in the “announcements” and “new scratchers” subforums due to their nature.

The point is to change the nature of them and make it not be spammy.

Support, this could help close the spam which probably the ST would get too many reports about to delete them all.

Also I normally watch the announcements forum very closely on the last Wednesday of a month so I can do this: https://scratch-mit-edu.ezproxyberklee.flo.org/discuss/post/3744033/

54329 wrote:

badatprogrammingibe wrote:

54329 wrote:

badatprogrammingibe wrote:

What negative consequence does spam in the announcements forum have?

You like spam?

In general I do not approve of spam, however I am indifferent towards it in the “announcements” and “new scratchers” subforums due to their nature.

The point is to change the nature of them and make it not be spammy.

No, what I meant is that because of the fact that the announcements forum is a forum for announcements, and the new scratchers forums are for new scratchers, it is okay for there to be spam there.

badatprogrammingibe wrote:

No, what I meant is that because of the fact that the announcements forum is a forum for announcements, and the new scratchers forums are for new scratchers, it is okay for there to be spam there.

And that, I believe, is where we can agree to disagree.

Semi-support. Personally, I think that this would be somewhat useful in terms of people spamming too much because they don't understand how the forums work and/or the fact that they might just want to annoy people. However, I agree with you that it might be too restrictive, because I have less than 100 posts (EDIT: I now have over 100, but my point still stands), as do many other scratchers who might have something important to say. Perhaps this could be implied, but would be based on whether the scratcher has frequently necroposted or spammed in the Announcements forum rather than the amount of posts they have. Thanks for reading my long ramble, and I hope you take my advice!
(Also, I'm very sorry for filling up your inbox if you don't check and/or care about this topic any more.)

One thing though - if someone spams in other forums to “unlock” the Announcements forum they'd probably already be banned or something…

Nambaseking01 wrote:

One thing though - if someone spams in other forums to “unlock” the Announcements forum they'd probably already be banned or something…

No, as they wouldn't spam in other forums if the announcements forum wasn't locked.

badatprogrammingibe wrote:

No, as they wouldn't spam in other forums if the announcements forum wasn't locked.

Yes, but this suggestion makes the Announcements forum locked for people having less than 100 posts.

Nambaseking01 wrote:

badatprogrammingibe wrote:

No, as they wouldn't spam in other forums if the announcements forum wasn't locked.

Yes, but this suggestion makes the Announcements forum locked for people having less than 100 posts.

I think they're aware that this topic is discussing that particular issue. I can see where they're coming from though; the Scratch Forums are a more hidden now than they were back in 2015-16 before they removed the Discuss button from the nav bar, and the Announcements forum is the only place that the ST provides an easy link to the forums, that being on the top right of the front page.

Since Announcement topics get a lot of exposure from Scratchers who probably have no idea where they are or what they're doing, the result of that is a bunch of spam from the likes of people who just realised that you can put blocks on announcement posts what??? Since they otherwise wouldn't have ever posted on the forums, either because they don't like it, they find it too intimidating or becaus, they have no idea where they are, what I think they're trying to get at is that spam is expected and shouldn't be punished for on the Announcements forum unless it's by someone who's an already established forum member.

The only way you could really fix this would be to move Announcements away from the forums entirely and have a separate page for these things (I mean you might as well do something with this page lol)

I think that this is a good idea, but I think it should be 50 posts, not 100.

CatsUnited wrote:

The only way you could really fix this would be to move Announcements away from the forums entirely and have a separate page for these things (I mean you might as well do something with this page lol)

That should be the better approach. Having the discussion forums in the footer is enough.

Lukesstitch wrote:

I think that this is a good idea, but I think it should be 50 posts, not 100.

No, bad idea. People with 50 posts still spam (speaking from experience),

Support. It's very annoying to warm new users, they don't listen anything! They just blockspam. ST members don't close announcement topics for a while so everyone can share their idea. But they are using it wrong! At least this could prevent these.


new scratcher: *spams*
new scratcher: look, now im at 50 posts!

Morimop wrote:

Support. It's very annoying to warm new users, they don't listen anything! They just spamblock. […]

It's “blockspam”, and not “spamblock”. Just letting you know

(this 60-second rule. wow)

Nambaseking01 wrote:

Morimop wrote:

Support. It's very annoying to warm new users, they don't listen anything! They just spamblock. […]

It's “blockspam”, and not “spamblock”. Just letting you know

(this 60-second rule. wow)

Oof, thank you. I always write it wrong.

Support, this would prevent spam and blockspam from lots of Scratchers.

I honestly don't know what else to say about this suggestion…

LuckyLucky7 wrote:

I honestly don't know what else to say about this suggestion…

Glad someone else has the same feeling. :P

Sorry, you have to wait 60 seconds between posts.

WindOctahedron wrote:

They could click any section and spam there. However, there is a higher chance of creating a new topic, and as I said in my post, it's good, because they are able to get notifications for the replies that can explain forum rules.
Also, another bad fact is that the Announcements forum contains only one sticky that does not explain the rules of the forum(s), while other forums that the user is likely to post in have more stickies that explain the rules.

Nothing to say here, so I'll just move on.

And how much about the forum rules and etiquette did you learn? I bet that a lot. Also, why wouldn't you tell me the number of posts you think should be required (suggest an improvement to the suggestion), instead of listing the high requirement as one of the reasons to not support?

Maybe 50 posts?

The fact that it's the least interesting section is actually one of the reasons why it contains a lot of spam. Firstly, people don't look there, and secondly, there are not that many constructive posts to serve as an “example post”, both because there's not that much to talk about (“not interesting”).
And it all gets worse by the fact that the front page contains a direct link (Scratch News) to the Announcements forum.

People spam more because no one views it?

coder2045 wrote:

WindOctahedron wrote:

And how much about the forum rules and etiquette did you learn? I bet that a lot. Also, why wouldn't you tell me the number of posts you think should be required (suggest an improvement to the suggestion), instead of listing the high requirement as one of the reasons to not support?

Maybe 50 posts?

Lukesstitch already told us that number, and Nambaseking01 replied:

Nambaseking01 wrote:

No, bad idea. People with 50 posts still spam (speaking from experience),

The fact that it's the least interesting section is actually one of the reasons why it contains a lot of spam. Firstly, people don't look there, and secondly, there are not that many constructive posts to serve as an “example post”, both because there's not that much to talk about (“not interesting”).
And it all gets worse by the fact that the front page contains a direct link (Scratch News) to the Announcements forum.

People spam more because no one views it?

People spam there, because only a few users that are experienced enough to report those posts view it.

Can I just ask how effective it would be? There still is the potential of spam if a person has 100+ posts, and some with less than 100 posts might actually know how to use the forums well. I do see that this is a good idea, but I'd rather see something slightly more complicated.

Your suggestion, as great as it is, is a spark for other ideas, and therefore it's not the only way to combat spam (I hate to sound patronising, but that's the way I'm going to have to put it). My idea would be to, when someone first posts, show the rules, and in large writing, say “read these carefully, you'll be asked about these later” and quiz them based on the rules and etiquette. This will allow people who have gained 80% out of 100% marks to post, and those who have gained <80% will have to read the rules again, and retake the test. Sure, it's a bit more ugly and annoying, but it's how TeamExtreme handled it, and to me, it sounds quite a bit more effective than just blindly assuming everyone knows the etiquette and rules. If you do have thoughts on this idea, please do quote this post and post them, then notify me on my profile (I'm not following this topic, since I really only follow topics of my own in this forum, so I get to see what responses are to my topics).

Banana

Okay..
I support!