I didn't keep too close of an eye on cormyn's era of AG, but I do know that I saw his forum posts everywhere. Even if he only stuck around for a little bit, his presence was sure felt.
An admin's public face is vital for any forum's success. I haven't ever seen a popular forum where the staff was unseen.
I did mention it. Like I said, don't get your hopes up. He wasn't against the idea, but he also wasn't as gung-ho about it as I was.
Expected this. Wait, did I reply to this on page 10?
Oh, wait. I did. Silly me.
Alright... let's forget about the forums for just a moment here and turn our attention to the game comments. Being the avid gamer that I am, I tend to read through game comments almost every day for the fun of it because that's just the way I am. What I notice when I sift through these comments is that almost all of the ones from the past year or so are very short, 1 or 2-word comments! What I also notice is that a lot of these comments are posted by users who have between 5,000 and 10,000 AP, and the reason why the have so many AP in the first place is because they've posted so many of these short comments that don't relate specifically to the game!
The current AP system has been abused time and time again. With the new AG3 point system, there are supposed to be safety nets that will block this. Or at least that's what I heard 2 years ago. If the current web developers are having trouble with putting skins in AG3, I can't see how they will ever accomplish this.
This wouldn't bother me so much, but it appears that literally nothing is being done about it... this lack of supervision over game comments is telling point-hungry users that they can get away with posting ridiculously short comments and keep every point they've "earned" from posting them!
During Cormyn's reign over AG, I would often see him smashing users for doing this. He had the eye of a hawk and really took spamming seriously.
The game comments... all of them... are in need of a thorough cleansing. If the current moderation doesn't want to step up and handle this ongoing problem, the team needs to be expanded to find people who will take on the spam!
I do think an occasional temporary shutdown of all game comments for "spring cleaning" would be better. Besides, who can't wait a week to post their comment on a game for 2 lousy AP that will become useless when AG3 is released? It's really not like their comment will be that vital.
It would also be helpful if the admins had the activity to make the flag useful since those spam comments will invariably be flagged. With enough activity, the admins should be able to mass delete flagged comments, which would remove spam. The problem is that the spam is self-protecting since it is common enough that it will be impossible to show that the comments are being deleted because new spam will simply replace the old spam. Therefore, it is impossible to teach the spammers that spam is not OK.
Definitely. However, this will be very difficult to enforce because spammers don't necessarily pay attention to any rules, as they obviously break them in order to spam in the first place. There really isn't any easy answer.
That's not a problem if you have people cleaning the comments out fairly frequently, and it's a much better solution than just ignoring the situation entirely! AP farmers will be discouraged against AP farming if their comments all end up deleted, but if nothing is done, they're going to keep AP-farming and they're going to continue to get away with it.
This is blatant rule-breaking on a mass-scale. It's only going to get worse if something is not done about it soon!
There really is no other easy answer other than cleaning comments, warnings and bans, and making sure these users are aware that what they are doing is blatant rule-breaking. I can safely say that 75% of AP farmers aren't even aware of what they're doing, but are doing it because they see it as easy AP and think "Man, how has no one ever thought of this yet?"
I meant that there is enough spam to render regular cleanouts useless. I think the best solution would be to block submission of any comments that are below a certain number of words. This would prevent all the 1 and 2 word comments. As for AP farmers, regular cleanouts will get rid of old ones, but the site is well-known enough that new AP farmers will be created, and we would have the same problem all over again. Therefore, we can force AP farmers to cycle, but we cannot eliminate them completely.
A spam block for 1-2 word comments (or even [insert number here] comments for that matter) would prove to be useless given the fact that it isn't too hard to think up of a simple comment that can apply to any game and copy & paste it.
I think something is being done about it, but the site is popular enough to protect the idea of AP farming, if not the farmers themselves.
There is something being done about it. Unfortunately, it isn't the right thing to do. Different alternatives are necessary.
It's pretty effective to make sure they actually know about the rules. If they get a simple warning on their profile, they might not actually read it, because they don't visit their profile at all, and mods can barely make an impact on the points, if they are cleaning one game at a time.
If someone were to receive a message that AG redirects you to when you receive a temp-ban, I'm sure one would notice it and be sure to consider it. If they don't agree with the rule, then they will most likely leave. After all, AP farmer's presence isn't vital to AG's functions in any way, shape or form. Really, they are leeching off of the mod's time.
Personally, if I was an admin, I'd shut down game comments for 1-3 days and have a massive clean up of all spam comments. I know that new spam will always be posted but if everyone time a moderator deletes a comment it could send the infraction message as well I think it would be reduced.
"Spring cleaning." Good idea.
Been dreaming of this for years. But that would mean the admins actually care.
Oh, I'm pretty sure they do. It's all a relative issue.
Unfortunately, the admins most likely see this issue as something to get done on another date what with AG3 being released soon (maybe?) and more pressing demands like reviewing game submissions, legal issues, maintaining the site's integrity, advertising, etc.
It's not really that time consuming. It would simply be a code that would prevent any comment below a certain number of words from submitting.
Which would prove to be useless once AP farmers grow half a brain.
New AP farmers are joining all the time. Therefore, there is no way to completely eliminate AP farmers.
No, but there surely are ways of reducing the amount of spam created.
Then maybe the solution is to somehow force users to read the rules.
You can't *force* them upon the rules, but you can give them warnings.
Dan is a busy person. Whatever idea it was that was passed onto him (sorry Daleks, I lost track in 11 pages of posts) he probably considered a waste of what little time he has.
Again, we are truly the least of his worries. The bottom of his priority list.
It appears that Dan does not realize the importance that we users have to AG. We are the life of the website. We are the Admins source of income. Taking that into consideration, I think that we the users should be informed of what is going on with AGv3. We are entitled to at least that much.
This is a flash gaming website, and therefore the source of the admin's income would be the flash games. The forums are just one way to get people more interested into flash games and make people want to stay and play more releases.
Given the trends over the past few years, it's not out of the question to claim so.
AG has a huge community, even if it has been relatively shrinking over the past few months, but something this size can't just "up and die." There will always be new users replacing old ones. The problem resides at the fact that there are less "good" users coming in.
A thought crossed my mind about AG3: Assuming they have ads on that site (I wouldn't know considering I use adblock) could they be making half of what they are now? At first I thought it could've been double of what their normal income could be, but I doubt many people browse and play games on the beta site. This could be a reason why they've been putting it off; to get more money.
I assume companies pay AG the same seeing how it is the same corporation running both AG3 and AG2. No one is going to stick to one site.
To be entirely fair on the part of "Their customers are the game playing ones": They come complaining to the community as well, and without a community admin, their problems can't be fixed quickly either. Hence why we get 30+ threads whenever a server go down or a game is removed without a word.
They would benefit from a community admin, and the rest of us would be more likely to recommend this site to our more gaming friends.
The forums are a way of getting people to stay and play games. To get them popular again would result in getting more people to be dedicated to AG again. More people = more money.
But I won't feel bad about it, if they don't remove the html.
I do feel editing would prove to be more useful instead of HTML.
Sorry for the late post, I had keyboard problems.
