Ever since i had joined the forums, i have had noticed people making replies considered as spam mostly in the Announcements category and it doesn’t take the smartest person in the world to figure out what their intentions were.
Since Announcements is viewed by a massive amount of people, some users often think it’s a good way to get likes by being the first to reply, and they usually won’t have a valid question to the subject that is the main point of the topic.
Is there any way to stop people from doing this? It just creates clutter and the people with actual questions get buried in the 100+ replies of spam.
Is this a flaggable offense? This is getting really annoying to see, the desperate attempt for likes.
If a post does not contribute to the thread, it should be flagged as spam or off-topic depending on the post. Most likely, spam makes more sense since the posts are just “awesome update” and dilute the conversation rather than changing it (off-topic).
Since flagging is more of a slower process, couldn’t be create a PSA or perhaps, make the one in the rules more clear? (Or would a PSA be unnecessary)
I have just read through the rules, and even though it’s right there at the front, users won’t take the time to read it (hence the amount of useless replies inside the announcements)
If users won’t read the rules, they won’t read a PSA about the rules. The better solution would be to get the posts removed, which may be easier said than done depending on if the forum is used for marketing, where more replies is always better.
This frequently happens when Announcements are locked for about a 10 minute cooldown and by the time I type down my question, there are over 10 replies saying ‘Thank you! This has been long awaited’ .
Would a good potential solution be making replies to announcements regular+, not saying a lot of regulars are not guilty of doing this but should hopefully help prevent most of the spam.
Making the announcements Regular+ wouldn’t be such of a bad idea, but however, most members might disagree with this, since a lot of people who reply to these are members looking for attention or just reply for something else.
Some members might just ask this question when they can’t reply: Why can’t I post my reply in #updates:announcements ?
I am one of those people who post in the first 10 but the only reason I do it is that I really like the update and wanna give my feedback or something else that is interesting to see, or for other reasons.
From experience dev rel is always pretty good at answering concerns you have if you choose to and them directly however in my opinion only a 10th if actual replies are actually questions, the rest are spam. Unfortunately I also find as you said it’s mostly members looking for attention.
Earlier I proposed locking badges for announcements which while won’t discourage the root of the issue may stop some people from making replies just for the likes.
I only say that members are looking for attention is pretty much like 1st reply or an early bird, don’t know why I set them as an example, but we maybe know or never know.
I mean not all members are looking for attention and stuff, but that is what I see and feel at the same time. An announcement post is unlocked and everyone replies when it is ready to reply to it, seems unlikely that some of them are questions, like what you said in your post, and maybe some of them are spam, flag it?
Locking badges away from people that post in #updates:announcements might have some Pros and Cons, since the majority of people earning badges do come from announcements, but some users might have got them from topics or replies in other categories.
