Silk Road forums

Discussion => Newbie discussion => Topic started by: falerin on August 23, 2013, 05:05 pm

Title: The purpose of newbie discussion - Idle wondering and spamming up the post count
Post by: falerin on August 23, 2013, 05:05 pm
A thread for general navel gazing and idle speculation. Rhetorical questions in their finest form of mental masturbation.

I must profess as an experienced community moderator in other forums that the purpose of this forum and indeed the entire behind it seems rather counterintuitive to me.

Are we worried that the quality of the spam elsewhere will go down unless we are certain that our new posters are adequately capable of spamming the forums enough to get member status?

In all seriousness I am assuming that the idea is that only a real human will take the time to make 50 posts and therefore it will filter machine posts

Has that been an issue historically for  forum? Is this mechanism preemptive?

And more to the point is the mechanism even working given that we encourage spamming to get post count up rather then quality posts and all that this is doing is encouraging scammers to target the newbies who may be less informed. As has been shown by at least one person repeatedly spamming the newbie boards with junk links to scam sites today.

I am against trial by fire in a general sense, and I find it particularly odd here.

I am not sure I tend to get a market structured around an MMO style You  N00b! approach to business.

Such an approach is likely simply to drive clientele off.

Mind you I am sure that given this market environment there are always new customers but hostility toward new customers seems a rather counterproductive business model to me.
Title: Re: The purpose of newbie discussion - Idle wondering and spamming up the post count
Post by: thenetnitrate on August 23, 2013, 05:18 pm
yes you are correct but its a wasteland of info where the mods look for the gems of talking heads that can be let in to the circle where one speaks if they hold the shell.

thats my bit coin spent ka-ching
Title: Re: The purpose of newbie discussion - Idle wondering and spamming up the post count
Post by: smokysal on August 23, 2013, 06:26 pm
It does seem odd. I guess it's just a test of dedication. Solving 50 captchas is certainly a sign that you really want to post....

I don't REALLY want to post that badly though. Just came to post some nice feedback about a vendor (masterpiece -- great meph!). I guess if I'd been scammed or was pissed off I might be more motivated to wade through 50 captchas.

Amusing that some of the posters in the spam threads have a total of 51 posts. Was it worth it?
Title: Re: The purpose of newbie discussion - Idle wondering and spamming up the post count
Post by: incubusdriver on August 23, 2013, 06:35 pm
And think about it like this:

If I were a seller and wanted to get my 'street cred' up a bit, how easy would it be for me to create multiple accounts and start singing my own praises? It would be easy.

But if I had to get 50 posts under the belt of every single fake account before I could post in 'somebody cares' land, well that would be more of a challenge.

That's my two cents anyway :D
Title: Re: The purpose of newbie discussion - Idle wondering and spamming up the post count
Post by: mykat on August 23, 2013, 06:38 pm
Is it worth it?
It costs less to mod a forum where there is a filter to 50 posts before you can post in the main forum.

Is it good?
No, cos lots of people only come here when they wanna say something...

But so to do the spamers...

but it's good to know that the newbie forum is read for the reasons above ;)
Title: Re: The purpose of newbie discussion - Idle wondering and spamming up the post count
Post by: wrathmore on August 23, 2013, 06:42 pm
I can see the idea but its kind of irritating, i personally have refused to be part of SPAM threads so it takes a long while to make my way upto the normal forums, where as somebody who has made 50 posts in an hour  of utter shit gets on before me. Spam should be banned in the newbie forum, keep it creative and constructive make people work hard to play with the big fish.
Title: Re: The purpose of newbie discussion - Idle wondering and spamming up the post count
Post by: incubusdriver on August 23, 2013, 06:49 pm
keep it creative and constructive make people work hard to play with the big fish.

Nail... meet hammer!
Title: Re: The purpose of newbie discussion - Idle wondering and spamming up the post count
Post by: smokysal on August 23, 2013, 06:51 pm
Can see your point incubusdriver, but I'd have thought people wouldn't put too much stock in replies from brand new posters. Especially if they just post one or two "this seller is awesome" posts. Suppose it probably does make the main boards quieter.

I wasn't sure if spamming to 50 was allowed or not when I saw a couple of spam threads on the front page where the poster had stopped at 30 or so. Thought maybe some cruel mod let them toil then banned them. But no, seems you can just spam it.
Title: Re: The purpose of newbie discussion - Idle wondering and spamming up the post count
Post by: incubusdriver on August 23, 2013, 07:14 pm
Thought maybe some cruel mod let them toil then banned them.

A real cruel mod would have practice at this, and perfected the art of stopping them on 49 ;)
Title: Re: The purpose of newbie discussion - Idle wondering and spamming up the post count
Post by: falerin on August 23, 2013, 07:50 pm
Diabolical and entirely evil. I will have to keep that in mind for use elsewhere.  >:-)