"Forum Games" and spamming that goes on around there

[Scaredgirl]

Hi, forum gamers!

It's time to have a little talk again. Yes, it's about the same thing we talked about the last time.

We have a problem with the "Forum Games" section. The problem is of course all the "games" where people post one of two words, basically spamming. In fact there are more posts written in "Forum Games" than all the other sections combined and we have to do something about that.

At the moment it's not a huge deal but as our forum grows and "Forum Games" becomes bigger and bigger, it's starting to use too much space on our forum database, which means we are using more and more server resources.

Example of a good forum game:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,3456.0.html

Some examples of not so good forum games:
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,4407.0.html
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,3924.0.html
http://elementscommunity.org/forum/index.php/topic,2533.0.html

There are a lot of those SPAM threads in there where only a couple of members post insane amounts of 1-3 word posts every day.

How are we going to solve this problem? Make new rules? Ban some games? Close down the whole section? Something else?

Discuss.

[pepokish]

I have been waiting so long for a mod to go into the "Last Person to Post Wins" thread, say "I win", and lock the thread. 

Back on topic, I typically tend to avoid the Forum Games section specifically for this reason (encouragement of spam).  Personally, I see no reason for the section to even be there, but now that members are used to having it, it probably wouldn't be easy to remove it now.   

I think the same principals apply here, that were applied to voting.  The best you can do is to teach the correct way of going about things, and hope people listen.  A sticky containing some basic guidelines and a warning against spam may help a little.  Perhaps "hire" a few more mods to work specifically in the off topic (or even just forum games) sections?

[Scaredgirl]

I have been waiting so long for a mod to go into the "Last Person to Post Wins" thread, say "I win", and lock the thread. 

I already did that the first time we had this awesome game. Apparently it didn't work because the thread got recreated.

Back on topic, I typically tend to avoid the Forum Games section specifically for this reason (encouragement of spam).  Personally, I see no reason for the section to even be there, but now that members are used to having it, it probably wouldn't be easy to remove it now.   

I think the same principals apply here, that were applied to voting.  The best you can do is to teach the correct way of going about things, and hope people listen.  A sticky containing some basic guidelines and a warning against spam may help a little.  Perhaps "hire" a few more mods to work specifically in the off topic (or even just forum games) sections?

Some kind of mod might be a good idea. We could make the section read-only so that regular users cannot start any games. All games would have to be approved by the "Forum Game Organizer" (or whatever) who starts threads. This way we would get rid of games like "One word story" or "Type "False Gods" using only your buttocks".

One other rule I've talked about earlier could be that there has to be a specific number of replies from other users before you can post again. Problem now are 100+ post threads with 2-3 people spamming like crazy.

[miniwally]

I have been waiting so long for a mod to go into the "Last Person to Post Wins" thread, say "I win", and lock the thread. 

I already did that the first time we had this awesome game. Apparently it didn't work because the thread got recreated.

Back on topic, I typically tend to avoid the Forum Games section specifically for this reason (encouragement of spam).  Personally, I see no reason for the section to even be there, but now that members are used to having it, it probably wouldn't be easy to remove it now.   

I think the same principals apply here, that were applied to voting.  The best you can do is to teach the correct way of going about things, and hope people listen.  A sticky containing some basic guidelines and a warning against spam may help a little.  Perhaps "hire" a few more mods to work specifically in the off topic (or even just forum games) sections?

Some kind of mod might be a good idea. We could make the section read-only so that regular users cannot start any games. All games would have to be approved by the "Forum Game Organizer" (or whatever) who starts threads. This way we would get rid of games like "One word story" or "Type "False Gods" using only your buttocks".

One other rule I've talked about earlier could be that there has to be a specific number of replies from other users before you can post again. Problem now are 100+ post threads with 2-3 people spamming like crazy.

I think the mod would be a good idea but could cause a long pause between being able to actually start the game as there are some good games in there (RPG's for example) so this person would have to be online 24/7 which I think is kind of impossible unless if you want big pauses between topics being created.

The post idea I think is bad due to like you said 2-3 people in threads spamming like crazy.

[Scaredgirl]

I think the mod would be a good idea but could cause a long pause between being able to actually start the game as there are some good games in there (RPG's for example) so this person would have to be online 24/7 which I think is kind of impossible unless if you want big pauses between topics being created.

The post idea I think is bad due to like you said 2-3 people in threads spamming like crazy.

I don't see how this person would have to be online 24/7. All he has to do is start the thread. It's no different than what we have with "Events and Competitions" at the moment.

Sure there would be less forum games, but the idea is to have quality over quantity.

The post idea I think is bad due to like you said 2-3 people in threads spamming like crazy.

Not sure what you mean by that. I'm guessing you misunderstood what I was trying to say.

[miniwally]

So would no people be able to start new games apart from this one person because I think that would be a bad idea because one person will not be able to start all the games and control them all.

[pepokish]

So would no people be able to start new games apart from this one person because I think that would be a bad idea because one person will not be able to start all the games and control them all.

But the whole point is that there are too many forum games at the moment.  You're thinking in terms of how many games we have going on right now, when the eventual goal is to have way fewer threads running.

Besides, why can't there be more than one mod?

One other rule I've talked about earlier could be that there has to be a specific number of replies from other users before you can post again. Problem now are 100+ post threads with 2-3 people spamming like crazy.

I kind of like this idea, if it would be possible to implement.  I know there are automatic ways to control flooding by limiting the amount of posts by time (i.e., you may only post once every 30 seconds), but I'm not sure if there's a way to have it done by number of posts from other users.  Essentially, the script would have to understand that when x number of posts have been made by anyone other than this user, this user may post.  You're the expert, so you would know if something like this is feasible. 

[Demagog]

Yay! I've had a bad influence on the forums!

That being said, my forum gaming has steadily decreased... getting lazy I guess. Honestly, you should just close those threads. They get boring rather quickly. Just make a rule that there must be a minimum post length. Fifty characters perhaps? That's about the length of a long sentence.

[airframe]

Rules and a Master of forum games to enforce them is one way to go.

Requiring a number of post before you can post again might also have undesired affect on the better games.

[dragonhuman]

approval of games sounds like a really good idea, I feel like a jerk for making my game that I'm suprised wasn't posted on there make sure to delete ones that would not fit the new rules (like you can delete my topic now if you want)

[Glitch]

The problem with forum games is that anyone can make them.  The elements RPG got hijacked four times, the three word phrase went twice, and the good versus evil had three threads.

I don't care if a newb participates, but they shouldn't be able to make a thread there until a certain amount of posts is achieved.

[Scaredgirl]

Ok here's what's going to happen:

I'm going to make "Forum Games" read only and give you guys couple of days to finish the current games. Then I'm going to lock most of the threads, maybe leave a couple, and then we will start things fresh.

Meanwhile I'm going to look for someone to run the forum games.