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.
Yes!! Flagging bad comments is the best way for us to clean them up. I try to review the flagged comments at least once a day, and I know Justin does in the mornings during our work week. I tend to do more cleanup on the weekends and in the evenings when I'm at home. It's not even technically part of my job description, but I care about the site enough to invest my time, along with our AMAZING moderator team, to keep garbage off of our site.
If I see comments which are especially spammy or break our Terms and Conditions, I'll generally open that user's *entire* posting history and start trimming things pretty aggressively -- if you're going to make yourself noticed by spamming or breaking rules, then you deserve a little more scrutiny. Think of it like a cop who pulls you over for speeding, and then takes a look through your driving history when they check your license and see how many times you ran red lights or stop signs, or drove too fast or whatever. They might have ignored that broken tail light, but since they pulled you over for speeding *anyway* ...
Skater, keep in mind too that having EXACTLY seven words doesn't guarantee we'll leave your comment alone.
My biggest headache is when users write a sentence like "This game is pretty good, I like it." and then copy that comment to several other games. Thankfully, when I'm reviewing what a user has written, this kind of spam sticks out like a sore thumb, and is quite easy for me to delete.
I'm actually working on a guide with the Moderators to help users get a better understanding of what a good or bad game comment is, and how to make them good enough to qualify for merits. I'd love to see us handing out more merits for quality comments ... we just don't see many of them these days.
As a trivia tidbit, since others have talked about repeating words, did you know the word "buffalo" can be used as a noun (place and animal) as well as a verb (meant 'to bully' or 'to intimidate'? You can actually write the word "buffalo" eight times, and it will qualify as perfectly good grammatical English. Don't believe me?
It's only a guide line. It's very hard to say something constructive in less than 7 words, which is why we tell people that no comment under 7 words is allowed.
But if you're able to create a constructive post in less than 7 words, feel free to do so! I won't stop you, as long as it's constructive!
PLEASE READ! I have just been informed that I am a terrible role model and that no one should follow my example, ever. Anyone who mirrors my actions are still bound by the rules. I can not be held responsible for anyone who does not heed this warning. Thank You.
Don't act like you've been here long enough to see any. And "these days" would make it sound as if there were EEVER any good comments. It's just harder to find merit worthy comments, because no one looks for them. They just look ofr the little kiddies spamming in game comments, which, really doens't matter.
Aslo, 5 buffalos makes a sentence, as well. The first and Fourth word must be capitalized though.
I'm actually working on a guide with the Moderators to help users get a better understanding of what a good or bad game comment is, and how to make them good enough to qualify for merits.
I would like to see that. Then hopefully less people will spam.
Well, it would work like the thumbs up. Everyone flagging an awesome review then the Administrators will notice it. Why did they take out the thumbs up in the first place?
I hate short spammy comments because if you ask a question in the comments, it gets pushed down into oblivion thanks to "good game" and "neat" comments. Ugh.
And if we mods are able to see who upvoted what, we can go ban you for abusing the feature.
Well, it would work like the thumbs up. Everyone flagging an awesome review then the Administrators will notice it.
Please do not hate on people with good comments. Flagging a comments means it will be deleted. The admins will notice it, and delete it. So please, use the flag for what it was intended, will ya?
Don't act like you've been here long enough to see any.
Skater, this is the second time in as many days that I'll say this: watch your attitude in how you post. I personally read a LOT of user-generated content on this site, whether it's in the forums or user-to-user profile messages. I spend a few hours every night and several hours on weekends, ASIDE from my day job of writing software for the business.
When I said "we don't see" I was speaking collectively for the entire moderation team, not just myself -- we've been having discussions about it off and on, and I've seen other comments from them to other users that they don't see many merit-worthy messages these days either.
[quote=Cneere]Please do not hate on people with good comments.[/quote] Cen, Pazx was asking to bring back the thumbs-up icon, and explaining how it could work, not telling others to abuse the flagging system. )
Hope this isn't *too* off-topic but... Do you see plenty of really good comments that just weren't good enough to be merit-worthy, or are those in short supply too? A good theory of mine is that the decrease in wanting to review, thus a decrease in the number of great comments, was sparked from excessive gossip. I dunno about the members of today, but I heard a lot of said gossip in early 2010. And with that, there really isn't a lot of people to look up to as a role model for this sort of thing.
