Hi there. I'm not an active DP member for long time, but in the last time I started seeing threads like this one here. Is it really, really necessary that 11 people to say Yes to a question ? 10 (sorry). One guy wrote an e-mail address. This forum is kinda full of this stuff. Spamming + Lots of users means the board runs very low. I don't think is necessary for each person who reads a thread to answer just like the guy above him.
if you see something like that and suspect spamming and useless posts, use the report post button and let us know. if there is more then one problem post in a thread, make note in your report, and we'll look into it.
My favorite is when they copy and paste the previous content, change a word or two and it;s their own post. Isn't it funny how that works?
Surely it's infraction-worthy for running up a post count / post having no value? I mean, a few of the same reply is bearable - gives you some kind of reassurance that what you're being told is correct. But when it happens over x amount of pages it's just silly.
Moderation by the numbers: The main page shows over 100 different forums. Somewhere in those crevices are roughly 1500 people lurking or logged in, and this is on Saturday night. Policing this crowd we have 3 mods and an admin logged in. [ADDED: I checked when I finished the post, and we had 1 mod and no admins logged in... leaving the entire forum effectively unmoderated. It may be Saturday night in the US, but we have users all over the globe, many of whom are also spammers.] According to the front page we have 60,000+ active members. On paper we have 23 mods... but 3 havent logged in for 6 mo - 1 year +/-, and 1 more has mentioned he seldom moderates. Effectively we have less than 20 moderators, so less than 1 per 3000 members. If you click the "SPY" button (top of the page, under the "Community" tab) you'll see every post as it hits, and you'll notice posts are added at the speed of an AOL teen chat room. It's a numeric impossibility for the job to be done correctly with the numbers shown, so moderation is spotty in places and missing in others. That won't change until it is deemed important enough to seriously address. COMPARISON V7n has twice the number active right now (3000 loggied in or lurking), but a smaller number actually logged in. [NOTE: If DP removed the spammers and career trolls it allows to reside here to piss on the place like a pack of incontinent squirrels, the number of people logged in would be about equal.] What assets do they have in place? They currently have online 1 admin who actively moderates, 2 supermods, 5 mods, and 7 mentors that actively report spam and try to keep threads on track. Compare that to what we have online now [1 mod]... and you see there's a reason they dont have the cesspool of spam we experience here. If you want to fix the problem, here's step #1... you must first learn to delegate.
I know how VB software works, but it's dubious that a large number of mods suddenly set their status to "invisible" simultaneously. Moot point anyway, we dont have sufficient numbers to cover the number of members actually online. Its a volunteer gig, they cant all be on 24/7. Chances are they have lives & jobs of their own. There is a reason we've seen several threads recently begging for mods in specific areas. It isnt because things are going swimmingly, it's because the spammers are running amok.