I have really noticed a massive increase in spam on these forums lately and I am not not talking about General Discussion. I just feel the mods aren't really on top of it anymore, and get the feeling that they are not interested either. Most recently I noticed it in this thread but these stupid no help comments are in loads more topics. As a public forum I do feel there is a place for nonsense talk (in our case, General Discussion) but definitely not in Article Discussion. If someone was to come to these forums from an article on the front page I would be very surprised if they even sign up to the forums after reading a lot of the comments here. That could be a potential valuable loss to the community.
I can assure you that we do care and we are still combating a load of spam you guys never even get to see. We can't read every single post on every single thread though, which is why we ask you guys to report the posts when you find them
It is also important to keep in mind that most of the mods are volunteers who have jobs to go to and lives to lead, and must sleep eight hours a day while the forum is open 24 hours a day. We are trying to make sure mods are recruited in several time zones for this reason, but it does not always work out.
To be honest, I find that it's like that on quite a few tech sites. In fact, BT can be quite tame - go check out some of Tom's Hardware article comments for a comparison.
Yeah I know a lot of other tech sites are worse, thats why I don't visit them. Do we really want our beloved bit-tech to end up like them? Hey maybe i'm the one in the wrong and the posts are not spam. In fact since two mods have seen my complaint and the comments are still there I must be wrong. How they 'help or contribute positively in any way or on any level' I do not know.
Yea I was going to say this too as I'm normaly on the site from 10 am to around 4am next day due to working from home I notice when there is few to no mods at all.
As Nexxo has pointed out, all the mods, with the exception of staff, are volunteers and have day jobs in addition to real life commitments. When and if we are made aware/spot spam we take action to deal with it - this is our forum as well after all.
Pssst Nexxo, searchids expire really quickly... I'm not sure we all have it set to show when we're online. I've been the only one showing up before yet seen other threads in the moderation queue vanish before my very eyes. I occasionally set mine to hidden too...
I have to say that I think the mod's here do a pretty damn good job. But of course, they cant be everywhere at once. Im almost certain that they check every new application to join the forums to stop and spam bots getting through. When was the last time you saw a thread offering Cheapo Nike trainers eh? Sure some things slip through the cracks, but I'd rather they cut out the spam bots than cut out the spam from actual members.
lol invisible mode is not really invisible at all is it lol I'm not saying the mods dont do a good job just that there are times when there are no mods on the Site which understandable
The link has expired so I have no idea what thread you are talking about. I am assuming it is in GD though? Edit I am also well aware that I have had made some daft posts but the majority have been in daft threads and probably on topic. Also I don't get your arguments, mods ask us to point out spam to them, I do but then I am told to let it go???? So which is it?
No, I'm talking about this thread. Six contributions, all pointless. You are not "pointing out spam". You are having a whine that there is so much spam on these forums and that we are not on top of it and we don't even care. If you see spam, press the report button. We then deal with it. If you don't press the button you are part of the problem, not the solution.
All on topic I thought. Just shows that you really didn't read my post, I DID point out spam. And since the posts I thought were spam are now all gone I can assume another mod agrees with me.
Ugh, we can go round and round until I'm so bored I just ban everyone in the database and there's just 5 people left, OR we can all man up a bit and report some spam instead of moaning about it. Feedback is good - negative and positive, but we do need help with keeping an eye on the spam levels. We smash a lot of it before you guys even get to see it, but some slips through, and threads go off topic to their detriment, but the mods can't read every post in every thread. It's a community after all and we need you guys to lend a hand too. As Nexxo has said all the non-staff mods are volunteers who take time out from whatever commitments they have to do often quite tedious mopping up round here. It's not all fun and games you know.
I used to be a moderator on a site for a mod of a game, good God it was nothing but pain. I gave up in the end and just stopped doing anything, including posting. I check back once in a while to see if there's any new stuff to download, but that's it. Seriously, you have no idea of how much **** a mod has to put up with. Any hard decision they make is scrutinised by a group of anonymous people, not to mention the inevitable PMs full of loathing from the self righteous individuals who feel they have been dealt a grave injustice. You also get mods who abuse their power and really seem to think that the Sun shines out of their arses. I'm glad to say I haven't seen that on Bit-Tech.
To be fair, as some have pointed out, there are soooo many comments that would be called spam if just based on whether they actually are helpful/contribute to the thread. Some forums are far worse, every thread getting trolled like no tomorrow, (often by the mods ) I think there's not a lot of actual 'spam' here Hence why i've started to become a little more active
