As you know, a post on AG under seven words is considered spam. I think it would be neat if AG didn't let any posts or comments without seven spaces and/or hyphens wouldn't be posted at all, to filter spam easily. Feel free to give thoughts on this.
It could help to an extent, but what are considered words? Could some one post "oh hai a a a a a."
Then instead of game comments being "good" and "lame", they would be "good good good good good good good" and "lame lame lame lame lame lame lame." And probably without any spaces. lol I may be exagerating but the spam comments for games are ridiculous in numbers.
I think, other than restricting how people posts, forcing them to not break the rules, they should just learn to follow the rules. We trust that people can figure this out, at least after the first time we tell them. If not, then there are consequences.
Basically, think it like this: You are able to drive over the speed limit, but that does not mean you should. You can write less than 7 words, but in most cases, that would be a very bad idea.
Sometimes there is a good reason for writing even just one word: "Can I post porn here? Or link to it at least?" "No."
Then there's the theory of: Which is easier to spot and flag? If AG regulated posting to the point where all posts had to be 7+ words, would that be easier to spot than someone posting one word or one letter? Everything would be the same "size", even if compulsory length would make others type the same word 7 times.
well, i think that this is a pretty good idea. i'll give you an example:
the filter thingy blocks bad words, right? and since people know about this filter, they don't really post bad words because they know that they will be censored (with these ******** right?). BUT they don't try to get around the filter by putting spaces between letters or replacing c with( do they? they don't do it because it's too much trouble, so they don't feel like it. people won't spam, if it's hard to spam. if they have to write "good" seven times, they won't be as motivated to spam anymore because it takes too much work, and they don't want to do work to get points, because that's what spamming is: getting points without doing anything good or hard. so they could put good 7 times, but they wouldn't do it as often, and it's way more noticeable, so more people will flag it too, and the mods would treat it the same way as if they had just put "good." and there could be a thing if it's the same word over and over again, then that could be blocked too. it is a good idea in my opinion.
The regulation to type over 7 words is very loose. Even if it is more work, it is still easier to type those 7 needed words. But since it is more condensed, it is less noticeable than those that type short comments, like one word or one letter. A lot of white space is very easy to spot.
But we shouldn't force people to obey rules such as this. It make the activity go down.
Hey, let me give an example of how easy it is to spam comments:
First comment [typed]: Good good good good good good good good good good good good good
All the rest [ctrl+v]: Good good good good good good good good good good good good good Good good good good good good good good good good good good good Good good good good good good good good good good good good good Good good good good good good good good good good good good good Good good good good good good good good good good good good good Good good good good good good good good good good good good good Good good good good good good good good good good good good good
You see the problem?
I have seen people copy paste entire walls of text, meritted comments, the entire page of comments into one comment, writing out "awesome" one letter at the time as a comment... Also, yes, people do space up or misspell profanity to get around the censor. They actually do it a a lot.
Basically: People should be free to spam. That way we can remove their, excuse my French, CRAP! from the site much easier. If you make it hard for them to spam, you make it harder for us mods to moderate the game comments without having to read every single comment.
And: There are users that write a good comment, but then decide to post it every hour. There are users that write something like "lol, wow, this was a good game, lol lol lol lol!". Then there is "I really don't like this type of games, stop making them".
Okay then... And I suppose getting around it would just be more motivating. I don't really see how it actually worsens things, but I do suppose that people will only find more and more ways to spam. Which is why I can't wait for the AG3 Karma AP system, it'll help quite a bit with spammers.
I like this idea, as there are plenty of people who post short, worthless comments. But in reality, initiating a rule like this will only provoke people to break it, even moreso than before said rule was in place. I believe having a word minimum would cut some spam, but would also open up more egregious posts, defeating the original purpose.
