You may've seen my topic about the reporting of game comments. Seeing how common it is for members to make short posts and seeing how you've tried to make an attempt to deal with this, I just thought of a little idea which may perhaps end this whole short posting problem. I apologise in advance if this has already been mentioned or if it's already being addressed.
Could you not perhaps code/program that section so that members are forced to write a certain number of words in order for their comment to be accepted? Something like... I dunno... a minimum of 5-6 words. If they type less, then their comment would not go through and something like a red message would appear saying that "YOU MUST TYPE IN A MINIMUM OF 6 WORDS. PLEASE EXPAND YOUR COMMENT" or something along the lines.
This way no longer could members spam with comments such as "good" "crap" "rubbish" "baaaaaaaaaaaad" and will be forced to say a bit more.
I know it's not a foolproof idea and all it might mean is that members will just post something like "I think the game is really good" which doesn't mean much but I still think it's a means of somewhat controlling these short posts.
I'm not suggesting this be done to the forums as well but just the game comments section considering the sheer number of short posts in those games. Most members seem to expand their posts very well in the forums as it is.
"I think the game is really good" ( this isn't addresing directly to you You think it's good, so what. You put a rating and that says if you think it's good or bad, because your rating has a part in global grade of the game. That comment isn't contributing, if you write : Jump should be higher, controls are slow and not functioning, graphic is bad or something like that, it gives creator something to think about. So write helping comments, even criticism help
how do you think mods find merit worthy comments? the long post in the middle fo short spam, but if they make it so all posts are long, how will they find the good ones?
It cannot be done currently, as the staff would rather develop the new version of AG, rather than fixing stuff in this version, especially when the release is so close. Further, spammers are going to spam either way, and people who write for the points or because they actually have nothing to say, will still be there, just with longer spam posts, which will be harder to filter out when scanning through the comments manually.
Further, most mods have a higher standard when it comes to game comments than the usual guideline is. This means than anything below half a line and up to a full line could actually be deleted anyway, because it is rather limited how much review you can put into those few words, really.
how do you think mods find merit worthy comments? the long post in the middle fo short spam, but if they make it so all posts are long, how will they find the good ones?
That is the point of merits, all posts should be good...if they where there would be no need for merits
yeah, a minimum number of words on the post wouldn't really make all the posts good and constructive. It would only change a post that says "bad" to, maybe, "horrible, very bad, don't like it". the fact is that if all spam posts get long and with the same level of information that short ones, it's better to make them smaller, to avoid a long, but futile, reading of comments of the game.
You know, we've been spam hunting and spam discussing a lot. I see a major problem in how most members view spam.
A lot of folks are HEAVILY considered with the number of words in a comment to determine it's spamminess. This is really not the issue. The issue is the QUALITY of the comment. Let me explain a little further.
Strop gave an excellent example of a short post that isn't spam. This would be on a game comment:
"Great graphics, brilliant execution."
(something to that effect)
The above, would be acceptable in the game comments. It gives something constructive to the game creator. Therefore, it isn't spam. Now, as Cen was talking about above, even LONG comments can be spam. Go look at some of the Colony comments I've been cleaning out. For some reason those players like to copy and recopy their older comments. Even though the length of these comments are acceptable, they are still spam.
And that there's always a way around 8 words/32 letters. If people really want to spam for points, they will spam just enough to bybass the requirements.
There was also a post that reported a bug with less than 7 words. I was about to flag it, since they didn't explain, but I left it alone.
