Super Mario Bros. X Forums

Cedur wrote:If the required post count is just like 5 or 10 then you'll easily find some discussions where you can contribute without making useless posts. It would only take a few days.

Or a new user could PM their links to staff. Bots don't do PMs.

Let's see...
first post, new topic:
"Why doesnt it let me post my episode topic?"
Cue an explanation and 4 more filler posts so that he can get to doing what he wanted to do to begin with, or a PM to likely every staff member which, in practice, should be about as much to handle for staff as one report per spambot.
It's not like spambots actively harm your browsing experience on the site. They're a mild inconvenience at best for which you have to specifically go out of your way to pay attention to.

Penalizing new users for something they have no control over is wrong imo and would as Enjl mentioned cause a lot of confusion

Yeah forget about the PMing staff suggestion, what GhostHawk said is more feasible.

We're especially talking about bots posting links, some of them being potentially malicious, and you can't really know whether there's some fool or kid in the world clicking a link and getting their PC infected. So why not talk about a preemptive measure against bots posting links?

Cedur wrote:some fool or kid in the world clicking a link and getting their PC infected

>Natural selection

It wouldn't be something that's really noticeable for legitimate users. If the threshold is 3 posts that is already enough to cover the amount of posts bots usually get through, and would be low enough to pass without causing issues. The whole "the bots aren't a big deal" thing is the reason why after four years now they're still around and an inconvenience. I'd also say that the expected question topics are not as big of a deal as bots posting potentially malicious links, and would be less of a nuisance than the spam threads themselves. Ideally there should be a captcha before every post, at the very least every few posts, to clamp down on the problem once and for all but since that doesn't seem likely a simple mitigation should at least be applied.

Still against the suggestion for the same reason Enjl pointed out. The fact is, it is completely meaningless to solve a problem if you create another one in the process. And even if you include the link thing in the rules, I might as well remind you that most new users don't read the rules considering that they expect it to be like your average forum rules, a problem that has already been pointed out, but a solution was never found. In general, it may cause more harm than good. Spambot posts are generally deleted relatively quickly and I honestly don't know how kids would be interested in links like the ones in spam threads. After all, they generally join to talk about mario, share episodes, and ask for help. And almost none, if any, spambot posts actually talk about this stuff while including links. So, as it stays, spambots are more annoying than harmful, and while it is still an issue, the suggested solution is flawled and creates another problem.

How can disabling links for a few posts cause more harm than what spambots do? It doesn't make sense to say it's such a small problem it's fine, and then say a small fix isn't called for. If anything it solves one problem, and might cause a smaller one that can barely be called a problem.

I mean it ain't broken currently anyway unless you're going out of your way to be bothered by it.

GhostHawk wrote:How can disabling links for a few posts cause more harm than what spambots do? It doesn't make sense to say it's such a small problem it's fine, and then say a small fix isn't called for. If anything it solves one problem, and might cause a smaller one that can barely be called a problem.

No, it will cause a problem. There are users that join to post episodes and/or levels and they won't be able to do so if the system is applied. The fact is, the solution is flawled and spambot posts are quickly deleted. And almost no one is stupid enough to click on these links, and in my eyes it is a bigger deal if such a suggestion becomes real. First, it could possibly encourage spam, and second, it can confuse several new users. Expect to have several messages in help and support forum talking about this issue if it becomes a thing.

You ignored my first question, ignored the scale of the "problem," exaggerated details, and haven't shown evidence of this mass of people that are joining the forum to get right to posting levels and episodes that will immediately go to the H&S forum. Fact is that this has been a constant issue on this board for years now, and it should be at least mitigated.

I have a question: Is there an edit cap for posts? Out of curiosity.

Why is SMBX the only forum I know to hate people bumping topics, and hates double+ posters?
For example, i'm pretty sure twitter, facebook, etc. don't have rules stating that you can't bump or double post.
Why are these rules only for SMBX (afaik), i'm not complaining, just curious. Thanks!

Because Facebook and Twitter aren't forums, they're social medias.

Taycamgame wrote:Why is SMBX the only forum I know to hate people bumping topics, and hates double+ posters?
For example, i'm pretty sure twitter, facebook, etc. don't have rules stating that you can't bump or double post.
Why are these rules only for SMBX (afaik), i'm not complaining, just curious. Thanks!

Hm....

Usually when a topic is dead that means no one really cares about it, it's given all it's had to offer and has finally "passed away". When people bump it, they're bringing back an old post no one wants to see. I think that's how it works.

About double posting, I think double posting or triple posting or infinity posting however much we're talking is usually considered pointlessly adding to your post count.

I'm probably 100% wrong.

Snessy the duck wrote:Because Facebook and Twitter aren't forums, they're social medias.

Yeah, but i can't find evidence of these rules applying on other forums like reddit, gamefaqs etc. Why are they SMBX "exclusive"? (I don't know if any other sites have these rules)

Taycamgame wrote:

Snessy the duck wrote:Because Facebook and Twitter aren't forums, they're social medias.

Yeah, but i can't find evidence of these rules applying on other forums like reddit, gamefaqs etc. Why are they SMBX "exclusive"? (I don't know if any other sites have these rules)

I've been on a few forums that scold bumping, but SMBX is the first forum I've encountered to scold double posting.

The_Loaf_Lord wrote:I've been on a few forums that scold bumping

Hmm, which ones?

Taycamgame wrote:

The_Loaf_Lord wrote:I've been on a few forums that scold bumping

Hmm, which ones?

Mario forever forum

Taycamgame wrote:

The_Loaf_Lord wrote:I've been on a few forums that scold bumping

Hmm, which ones?

They're quite obscure, I'm not sure if you'll know what I'm talking about.

One of them was called berezaaforums or something like that, it was about a game using the ROBLOX game creating engine. Don't worry, I was quite young back then. The site now has actually been taken down completely because the amount of IP hacking they kept getting. But anyways, I was actually threatened with a ban once for bumping a topic... Quite a minefield their rules were...

Doesn't seem to be a common ruleset. But I guess having the bump and double post rules keep the community from causing chaos and traffic.