It's very common to see new members join, then immediately startpostingspamming the crap out of forums with pointless posts, and bringing back topics from the past, many of which have already been resolved.
What's more maddening is they do it immediately after joining, not knowing the time-in-rank restriction (6 days) on top of post count. So the spam is futile, even if the moderators let them slide.
It greatly annoys me (and I'm certain many other cK users too, do y'all?) to be flooded with notifications of these new posts, or just be lost in what's going on from it.
Some of them are trolls that deserve to be banned, but I believe most of them are just misguided:
1. Not extremely fluent in English, or
2. Younger users who have yet to know the impact of their actions.
They shouldn't be banned, but I think there should definitely be:
A. restrictions on their posting ability (at least in the first 24 hours or something like that), and/or
B. an auto-PM detailing this, or
C. a redirect to a rules topic
-though due to their lack of patience and possible limitation in English, a separate, shorter topic with just this info may stir their attention better. Throwing the whole rule list may deter them from reading.
For B. and C. to be effective though, the title of the PM or topic would have to really catch their eyes, like, "YOU'RE BANNED", or "READ OR RISK BEING BANNED", in big, and in red. Since they're already too lazy to read the rules, only something with a shock value like that would grab their attention. From personal experience, a formal title like "Welcome. Please read." just leads to it being ignored, especially if the message becomes a long block of text.
Though many of these spam posts are empty, I do see at least some of these spammers putting thought into their responses, even if they're not necessary (like their own opinions and advice on an already-solved past problem, for instance). It's a shame that they are sometimes punished as a result; they had good intentions, just poor execution.
Last edited by Mod; 03-17-2013 at 09:11 PM.
The monitors don't let them slide, the one that usually does it was attempting to take a weekend break but apparently that's out of the question.
^That was a lightning fast reply,
Also, referencing the banned spammers, I hope you don't mean the guy I just banned the other day. All he was doing was copy pasting lines from previous posters to make it look like he was writing things of substance, but every post was just a copy of a random line above his.
---------- Post added at 09:59 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:58 PM ----------
I just finished dealing with one as I came back to the new posts and you had just posted, lol.
Mod (03-17-2013)
Its really annoying but you have the point...
Mod (03-17-2013)
Ah, I understand THAT guy, right? I went to sleep that night, only to wake up to a random with 51 posts in the daily stats and was like, O.O
The one you just dealt with, probably the one that tipped me over to make this topic too. He looks like a 'real' member so far, just very off-track and inexperienced; I worried he would be red-barred immediately too.
Thank you for this.
I wanted to say something as well
Mod (03-17-2013)
Eh, I understand your view. I've complained about several newbies to people on Skype, but you know they don't mean any harm. They're just trying to do what they need to do to access the CK-level programs. I don't think an auto-PM would hurt though, I've considered the idea several times but never voiced it because I was afraid everyone would consider me a harsh ****face. That being said, meaningful posts are cool. Especially new ideas from fresh faces. But I think maybe we need a better way to check 'new posts' like being able to filter out specific threads/boards we don't want to 'check' on. Or, perhaps put a cap of posts per day for newbies and make them aware of it. Just some ideas.
+rep for having the kahunas to say it.
+Rep for being a genius.
Mod (03-17-2013)
I agree.
When I first joined, I only viewed neo-related threads in search of answers and made threads that would assist me.
Once I figured out people LIKED me, and that /I/ could actually help people, too, is when I decided to start chatting/being a goof. :3