[Rant] What is up with all the signature spamming?

The problem is that many of these guys wrote LONG answers in the past but soon found out that people keep asking the same question. What do you do? Write the same long answers over and over again? See where I am coming from?

I've noticed this too, but as annoying as it is, all I can do is to make sure that I'm as helpful as possible whenever I bump a thread. We're all guilty of giving short/generic responses at times, but usually it's because people are asking the same questions and not taking the time to use the search function before creating a thread that says, "how can i make money online?" or "how can I get more traffic to my site?"

So you complain about people asking the same old questions, and giving the same old answers, and you use the same old rant to do it?

Hello? Irony...

~Michael

Longer responses does not equal better

Easy guys.

Hey Rob,
I agree, I have seen quite a few signature "spammers" out there as of late. Although to be honest sometimes a quick, and to the point response is all that is needed, particularly with the newer members, it's best not to confuse them with too much information. It is up to the community to moderate a post for its relevance and quality.

If the poster's copy sucked, how is that a bad answer?

You can still find plenty of people helping others on this forum. But, there are always exceptions.


p.s. One liners do not always imply signature spam.

Good post. :p

They are an even bigger pain in the backside in the sub-forums. It's got to the point where I stay away from some sub-forums now just because it's not worth my time wading through all the spam. Then when you try to report it you have to wait 60 seconds between reporting each piece of spam so I just have to give up because I simply don't have the time for that. (I understand the time limit but it's still very annoying).

I think so much time is wasted in this forum with the reporting and the removal of spam. I would like to see a minimum post count before signatures are allowed and also a minimum post count before people can post in the subforums. That would mean people can only post in the main discussion area until they hit maybe 50 posts and it would mean the spammers and those offering very little value are found out much quicker and removed from the forum.

We need to remove the reason they come here which is for some quick exposure of a link.

I'm not sure what the exact answer is but surely there has to be a better solution to reduce all the time that is currently wasted with these idiotic spammers.

I hate one liners man

I agree. It may have its faults but it's still one of the best marketing forums around.

This is where I see things differently. Most of the established members here can tell when somebody posts nothing but one-liners. You can be pretty sure that if a long-time member is thanking a "one-liner" it's because they know the poster doesn't make a habit of it. A lot of times the one-liners are meant to be funny, or are a sort of shorthand that members here understand.

It can be tiring, sometimes. Other times, we just don't answer.

New members don't always understand the culture of our community.

We are ALL misinformed about something.

Value is in the eye of the beholder. My guess is that somebody even newer really appreciates what we would consider the "same old question", because they were too afraid to ask it.

You can't always judge intent, but I can tell you that when it's apparent, it gets reported, and the sig is either turned off or the member gets booted.

There are other things that do this, but you are right.

Perhaps you would feel better if you looked at it a different way. At least you only have to read single lines to get to the good stuff. What if spammers suddenly decided to post whole pararaphs of garbage?

I'm typically a man of few words, but I make my points. I bet the average length of my responses is around 100 to 200 words, but it's the quality (hopefully) and not the quantity that matters.

Value is not determined by length.

What qualifies as legitimate? Constructive? Who decides?

And,when it's noticed, it gets reported.

I would like to add what I think is really going on: This is NOT a new phenomenon, but what IS new is your awareness of it. Now that you ARE aware of it, it suddenly seems to be a rampant problem.

You, too, Robert.

All the best,
Michael

Use seo....

<BuyMyStuff>What's this thread about?</BuyMyStuff>

I was literally just commenting about this on another thread ---

it's gotten really bad the last 3 or 4 months.

I see people who have been members for 1 month but have like 500+ posts.

Everyone here knows what you are talking about. Things like "I agree. Great post." when those are typical of all the poster's comments and when they have a signature.

There is a guy, Randall Magwood, whose 5 line signature is about 3 lines more than 99% of his posts. I do not believe his 1-2 liners are for the signature only. Of course I could be wrong but I don't get that impression.

There are also 1000s of questions that don't need much explaining: Who owns this forum? Who is the best host? Should I choose to optimize for Bing or Google? What's your best money making strategy? What should I do if I need to make money today? Etc. Etc. Etc.

No one disputes the signature spam problem. I report them when it's obvious.

Mark

It could be a combination of many things, same questions that's already been answered, some post requires a longer explanation some don't. But, a longer response doesn't necessarily mean it's useful or correct. You can still answer a question in a sentence if needed. It depends on the post what my length of response would be, I like to get straight to the POINT as possible, no extra fluff to make the post seem valuable

A lot of sig spam is because people are trying to reach the 50 post count to send PMs, that as well as showing their signature. To solve this;

1. Only allow a signature for members who have at least 50 posts.

2. Have a spam report button, which is different from the regular report post button. This would allow one-click reporting of spam posts without requiring the time to give a reason why you have reported the post.

This spam report button would only report posts if the member has under 50 posts, to lessen the possibility of non spam posts being reported.

I wonder if any of the 300+ views generated any sales for OP? /wink

Take a bunch of developing countries and hook 'em up to the internet in ever-growing numbers.

Take a bunch of people in developed countries that start offering to pay USD for "forum posting" services.

Add them together and what do you get?

A couple hundred thousand new people in the past few years looking to make a buck online, with little experience, many of them being paid by others to join forums. Every "webmaster" forum saw this same influx of primarily English-as-a-second-language speakers in the past few years. There was no easy answer to maintaining the same community as when the audiences were primarily US/UK/CA/AU for many years before that... people in a totally different market with totally different cultures.

What's surprising is not that many WF threads are full of accounts that never offer a single post of substance, but that everyone else stuck around anyway. Other forums have essentially been killed by it (see: SitePoint, where I made over 20k posts before getting tired of the spam and moving on), but WF is still active as ever.

I wish there was an easy way to maintain the same level of discussion quality as in the past... I don't know that there is other than very heavy-handed moderation (banning every account that responds to every thread with "thanks for this share1!!" or "do more SEO and article posting!").

Some posts in this very thread is also an example
Also, ask new members to TRY TO USE THE SEARCH FUNCTION.

listen to Paul Myers. he's always right on so many levels when it comes to WF issues, and a lot of other stuff too for that matter. he's a voice of reason, amidst the chaos. for many many many years. Paul's worth paying close careful attention to. (thx)

Must be election time in the USA, or other countries this year.

You all sound like politicans, except for 3or6 of you all.

Maybe your are a bunch of 5 or 7 year olds.

Sorry guys, lets shake hands and do your thing like???????

He said this
she was not misbehaving
I did not mean that

Sarcasm is over.