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Question for Moderator, *^_^*

I even suspect Mile to be serious enough to actually leave this site - I certainly hope not.

Cheers, Martin
 
It can be very off putting, when a thread has three or more pages worth of spam added to it in the course of the evening. Who wants to trawl through all that crap to find the one post in the middle where someone has attempted to get it back on topic? And because of this threads do get lost. It's all well and good to say quote the relevant post and ignore the rest, but how are you supposed to find the relevant post in the first place?

And as Freya said, when you're new to the site it's even more off putting. You don't want to be confrontational with regular members but at the same time it can be disheartening to see your threads being hi-jacked by drivel.

I'm not claiming to be innocent of spamming, but I'm certainly not the worst offender, and there has been more than one occasion when I've logged into the forum, found that there's been 200 or more posts in one night, dipped into a couple of threads and seen that it's all nonsense and just given up reading them as a lost cause.

My last grumble on the topic is on the subject of member introductions. They get spammed to buggery, and a lot of people won't mind that and will appreciate that they're getting some attention and feel welcomed. But there's also a lot of people that will be intimidated by this great flood of in-jokes and running gags. They don't have a clue what's being talked about, or why they should find it hilarious. I wouldn't be surprised if quite a lot of them actually came to talk about books, shocking though it seems.

Other forums I've been to in the past that had spam problems consolidate all the 'banter' type spamming into one thread. When it got too long it was closed and another one was started. We still got to have off-topic threads, but all the long running sagas would be contained in the one place. That way, it didn't spill over into every other thread around. You could look on it as the forum soap-opera thread, or just the general chat thread, and that's how they're always treated, sort of as a forum format chat room. And they were always friendly, fun threads full of nonsense, and no one got annoyed that they were full of nonsense because that's what they were for.
 
generally I just ignore the threads your speaking of...I'm not put off by them, I just don't read them. I figure some others were having a good time the evening/morning before, and I just happened to not be around as the conversation progressed. No big loss. The spamming still is mostly contained to the general chat, so I don't find it to be a huge deal. I can find the book discussions that interest me and not fear a great number of irrelevant posts will prevent me from finding what I'm looking for.


I agree on the member introductions, though. Some people may be frightened off by the great number of inside jokes.
 
I agree on the Member's Introduction - and yes, I know I'm the worst.


You could look on it as the forum soap-opera thread, or just the general chat thread, and that's how they're always treated, sort of as a forum format chat room.
We have that, only with us it's not a single thread dedicated to banter, it's an entire subforum - hence the General Chat Forum.

Cheers, Martin
 
Martin said:
We have that, only with us it's not a single thread dedicated to banter, it's an entire subforum - hence the General Chat Forum.
But sometimes, within general chat, people will still want their thread not to be overtaken with spam. I don't think that just because a thread is in the general chat area we should regard it as open season.
 
Valid point.

This might sound silly, but couldn't the original poster ask people to please not spam their thread?

Cheers, Martin
 
I'm sure we can achieve a happy medium. I think it would be nice if more people started "serious" thread discussions. So, if you don't like what's out there, start your own thread! The button is right there at the top . . .
 
Agreed.

But I think the point is that many 'serious' threads get spammed to death, resulting in the original poster having to sift through 3 pages of nonsense before he gets to the relevant bits (if there are any).

Cheers, Martin
 
Yes, well, I'm sure we can all work on that. But I notice they tend to wander back on topic pretty well, too.
 
Yes, I agree. I mean, there's a lot of spam here, but it's all in good fun, and if a topic is worth replying to, it gets replied to, simple as that.

Cheers, Martin
 
Wow, got back on the computer this a.m. and see all these responses. On-topic too! ;)
Ashlea said:
I'm sure we can achieve a happy medium. I think it would be nice if more people started "serious" thread discussions. So, if you don't like what's out there, start your own thread! The button is right there at the top . . .
That's precisely my feeling.

There's room for both serious discussion and friendly banter within a thread. Going somewhat OT is a natural occurence in most threads - just like in normal conversations - and they usually wander back on. I think it's the wholesale hijacking of entire threads that get people upset.

There's nothing wrong with asking others to stop hijacking a thread or asking a mod to split off the OT stuff to another thread or to General Chat.

And to Mile-O, if you're still around (and hoping you are), it's not that difficult to ignore threads you don't like. Even if the title isn't descriptive enough, it's easy enough to leave it if you're not interested. There are forums I go to where I never go into the chat area because I'm not interested. - i.e. Ignore what you don't like - start threads that you're interested in. Not everyone wants to be serious all the time.

Ell
 
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