Request for Clarification: Spam

Feature Requests and Game feedback
1

I keep receiving mail from Saltypatra saying my posts are getting removed:

Your post was flagged as spam: the community feels it is an advertisement, something that is overly promotional in nature instead of being useful or relevant to the topic as expected.

This seems to be mostly about the weekly event thread. I’m definitely not advertising, the community even seems to strongly agree that my contribution is both useful and relevant to the topic. As far as I can tell listing a detailed drill-down of the the weekly event chest, along with past issues to watch out for, doesn’t remotely qualify as spam. It’s information unfortunately not readily available in-game, similar to other recurring event related guides getting posted in the very same place.

I believe this may fall under repeated intentional “Unnecessary Flagging of Forum Posts or Threads”, possibly by one individual using multiple accounts. I have improved my weekly guide in the past based on feedback requested and received, unfortunately this doesn’t seem to deter the disruptive behaviour. Please investigate the situation and remind the parties involved that a forum is about multiple people communicating, even on topics one might personally not be interested in or entirely agree with.

On the off chance you do consider me spamming, please provide more detailed guidelines to adhere to, I’m really not seeing how I would fall into that category other than being a frequent forum participant. I’d ask Saltypatra as the named contact person, I doubt she’d answer any time soon though, considering that she left Infinity Plus Two last year.

Also tagging @Lyya to possibly shed some light on this, the official forum presence seems to be rather low.

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me personally really appreciate what you are doing, i was flagged for sth else in the past, so can’t write here how this reaction from Salty looks like to me, just another way to make you silent.
so, keep on as long as you can - free hugs from me.

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Regrettably, those flagging your (very helpful for potential new customers) consumer alert are basically facilitating the burying of the documented actions by this company, without the mods having to cross the line of removing documentedly true information that exposes their practices.

The fact that the post gets flagged because a minority is ‘too inconvenienced’ by it to the point that they can’t scroll over it is not surprising in a public forum, but I hope you remain aware that if there was an upvote/downvote system, your posts would never end up classified as spam.

This ‘couple of people with veto power ruining it for the rest’ does seem somewhat familiar given recent events :thinking: :stuck_out_tongue: :vulcan_salute:

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To be fair, it is “that company’s” forums. They’re within their rights to police what is said here and to remove that content if they object to it. To me, it wouldn’t be any different than if you walked into a restaurant and started protesting that restaurant in front of the customers on their property.

It may not make such behavior “right”, especially in our eyes. But they wouldn’t be the first (nor the last) company to act as such.

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FWIW, I had been flagging the consumer-alert posts as repetitive noise, but haven’t for the last few weeks as (a) the improvement to add the expected event-key pool for the current week made them more useful and (b) I was somewhat swayed by arguments that they are good “take care with loot boxes” information for new players.

I’m just me; no army of sockpuppets here :slight_smile:

It tickles me the “your post was flagged” emails still come from Salty; like, way to go on the orderly transition of her responsibilities, guys. It’s been what, 6+ months now?

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Agreed, and the fact that the mods do not remove the weekly consumer alert should be evidence enough that it is not spam.

Hopefully Lyya can shed some unbiased light, since it is unlikely that the company mods will be able/willing to contribute on this topic.
:blush: :crossed_fingers: :vulcan_salute:

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What’s ironic is a human who is not spamming gets reported by other humans spamming the flag system and therefore said human is getting spammed with autobot messages.

Definitely GoW-esque.

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To be fair, it’s kinda hard not to see those posts when there is a giant CONSUMER ALERT image on them, even if you’re trying to scroll past them.

As much as I didn’t want to go to this extreme, I had to put Fourdottwoone on my ignored list as I’m tired of seeing those posts. It’s too bad, because I’ve enjoyed reading most of his other posts (and even liked a few of them). But it’s the only sure-fire way of not seeing those posts.

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same…I just wish the ignored list would also completely hide the post, so I did not have to see the “ignored content” part …at least I don’t have to scroll past the giant spam post anymore.

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I have a working scroll, so I could easily pass these messages, IF I thought they were non-informative.
I really appreciate the time used to provide our community with this valid information and I will continue
to give it a like.
#againstcancelculture #weavergateforever

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It’s crazy to me that some people get so bothered by one weekly post.

If anything, the consumer alert picture is useful to me because I know what that post is going to be about and can scroll past it instead of starting to read it (as I have the provided information already).

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Agreed they are hard to ignore (which is a positive given the intended purpose), and given that they are potentially helpful to new customers and keep this company having to face their questionable past actions, i am happy to scroll over them and give a ‘Like’ to fourdottwoone for his consistent commitment.

:pray: : although suboptimal as you highlighted, at least allows the post’s main target audience to still potentially benefit from it.
:crossed_fingers: :vulcan_salute:

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I suspect people flagging them just see the graphic and flag it as spam without reading it. It hadn’t occurred to me to read any of the alert posts until I read this thread. Not that I’ve been flagging, just ignoring, but some may see the banner and report

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So it’s the image that’s bothering you? I’m open for improvements, my painting skills never got much past colored boxes though. :see_no_evil:

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They don’t really seem to police anything though, and they never objected to further posts about Weavergate. My impression is that forum maintenance sort of got abandoned when Saltypatra left. At least that would explain why I’m still receiving mail from her, that’s probably just some old automated script reacting to forum flagging, no matter whether warranted or not.

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yep, that seems about right; cause i got the flagging from Salty and another one few minutes later from Kafka for the same post.

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I’d guess if you swapped to a banner graphic that looked less like a spam email then people would largely stop flagging it

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Hey folks,

There must be a setting I didn’t realise was active where automated messages come from Salty’s account, I’ll dig into it as this is the first I’d heard of it. I thought the message either came from the mod’s account who actioned the report or the forum itself. Often these settings on forums are a single checkbox in a massive list of options, so I’ve obviously missed one. Sorry about that.

Regarding this particular post, as you raised it publicly yourself I don’t mind discussing it here if you want this time @Fourdottwoone given the nature of the post in this particular case.

Spamming is basically any of the following:

  • Posting the same message over and over
  • Posting the same or similar message over and over accross multiple topics
  • Posting indiscriminately multiple times off topic/posts that don’t add value to a particular topic
  • Advertising

In the case of this particular post, the problem is the message is always the same except now with the added drop table.

As mentioned in the past, we’re totally fine with you posting the “consumer alert” at this stage and what your thoughts are on that, however, you will need to put it in its own feedback thread. Your posts are being taken down at this point because your post has become so spammy it’s now disrupting the forum and it can’t be left alone any longer.

Regarding the drop tables, it would be better if you posted where you’re getting that information from at the top of the table as well, although that doesn’t constitute spam. As we don’t publish the drop rates of specific Troops I think it is important to mention, as it does dance on a line where it could cause confusion/issues, but that’s not why the post is getting taken down. That’s just some feedback from me.

As a note, this isn’t a popularity contest, the number of likes on a post doesn’t determine whether it is actioned by a mod against the rules.

Also, regarding making a feedback thread for the consumer alert topic, this is actually the most effective way for feedback to be communicated and what the value of it is to other players. When we just have one user spamming the same copy pasted message accross multiple threads but not actually talking about the issue it’s something we can report once, but after that it’s just one dude with something saved in their clipboard - it’s lower value feedback at that point.

I understand the above sounds HARSH, but it’s literally my job to represent the community, I’m here for you folks, so if you’re devaluing your message and making it harder for me to get your point across for you, I think it’s in your best interest to know that you’re making it hard for me to represent you on a certain point and why.

Hopefully you can see where I’m coming from on this, it’s risky for me to be that bluntly honest with you because if it comes back and bites me it will literally make my job twice as hard in future again, which is not just my problem, but everyone’s problem.

Basically, I think there’s this idea that when a mod tells someone to make a thread about something instead of posting about it in other threads or being spammy about it, that maybe we’re just trying to bury it or something (?) but we’re literally doing it because if the topic is relevant, it will be so much easier to highlight if it has a dedicated topic…

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This all seems pretty reasonable to me, and I think it’s helpful to shed some light on the topic, thanks

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Well, if we’re being all blunt today, then let me ask a blunt question:

Why didn’t you guys use the past couple of months to fix the problem from happening again in the future (reasonable suggestions can be found on the forums), instead of arguing at length why - much like the myriad of bugs that aren’t bugs or that the CX team cba to even look at anymore - the issue isn’t an issue, only to summon Sirrian (who’s utterly out of touch with the game anyway) to cover for you guys and issue threats of ‘cutting off communication with the community’ (which you guys do at your liberty anyway and which will definitely happen again in three, two, one…)?

Why is it so damn hard for this company to act normal.

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