Our Spam Problem

[Makkon]

It's getting out of hand, and I've had several people I've referred to this site myself, my very own site, who have turned me down because they say "the members act like a bunch of twits."

If your comment isn't contributing to the original topic, or the conversation at hand, you are derailing the thread and being inconsiderate of everyone involved, most especially the thread owner. This is a music site, and MLR was meant to be a community of learning and growing, for seeking knowledge and increasing your skills. But what I've seen is pages of spam on pointless threads and maybe 3 posts on almost every song in the music section, sometimes none. People who need feedback are being ignored while you entertain yourselves at my expense.

I've stopped referring my musical friends to MLR. It's embarrassing and humiliating, and I've had enough.

If you can't contain yourselves, you will start to lose privileges.

Thank you,

~Ben

[Tsyolin]

It's true honestly, this is why most of the older members have left. Honestly Makkon the fact that you own this site makes you feel obligated to stick around, though if that weren't the case I feel like you would have left long ago as well.

[Lavender_Harmony]

Alright with this I'm going to be putting down a zero tolerance. Anything spammy within any of the forums outside of the dedicated spam topic will be outright deleted, repeat offenders will receive warnings with regards to their behaviour.

[Lavender_Harmony]

I would also like to make a note:

Threads older than 6 months that are revived (aka necroposting) will be locked without further comment.

[Artimeus]

To be completely honest, I'm surprised several long-time members haven't been banned already for contributing absolutely nothing of value to any topic. They know who they are.

I joined this site after being referred to it by Thorinair; I'm going to have to agree with Makkon, though. I used to refer several newcomers to this site on EQD's mIRC rooms, but lately, even I haven't been logging in because it didn't seem worth my time to sort through the spam to get to genuine nuggets of useful information.

I'd hate to see this forum shut down due to a bunch of morons. There are countless other places on the internet to be silly.

EDIT: another good policy to implement would be "police yourselves". That is, discourage spam, and report it if the user doesn't comply.

[Ed Viper]

Thank you, Makkon. I've more or less left this board (I rarely come on anymore) and I've stopped posting things in the music section outright because people seem to be too busy acting stupid to actually help me out most of the time.

I apologize if I ever contributed to the spam content of the forum (outside of the spam thread, of course). Hell, I'm sorry that it's had to come to this, really. Isn't this supposed to be like the official site for brony musicians?

I fell all dirty.

[SpyPie]

I read this and felt like it was my fault.

That being said. I'll probably lay off MLR for a while. I honestly feel like a big twit when I'm on here myself. Before I go to bed and look at myself in the mirror thats hung up on the wall and say 'God I'm an idiot, I'm going to get banned someday'. I should probably be doing more stuff than coming on here and annoying the daylights out of the members -_-

Time to take a break. In the meantime I'll be looking for the reason I'm like this.

Vent Over-

Note: I also Apologize for all those Derails I made. My Stupidity rubs off on any thread I might happen to enter. yeah, Sorry.

[TranquilHooves]

Yeah, to be honest, it feels like this forum is turning into the equivalent of an imageboard and I really don't want that to happen, seeing that this used to be a great forum where people actually helped eachother.
Glad to see the management are doing something about it though.

[soultensionbenjamin]

Well if you guys want this to be a strictly music related site, I think the best course of action is just make a technique and music related section for this forum and ill just go on my rainbow dash network if i want to talk about pony related stuff.

[Legion]

I'm often ignorant of my own actions. I know i was one of the bad offenders a few months ago, and tried to shape up a bit. I'm not sure how well I succeeded there. Bleh. Frankly, I'm not really sure what to think of this whole situation. Shame it's come to this, I guess.

[cyrricky]

Thank god these actions are finally having consequences. I've personally gotten ridiculously pissed off that this website was moving away from being a music resource and turning into what seemed to be some kind of playground. Thanks Makkon & Lav, it was really getting annoying.

[Navron]

There's a time and place for spam (aka, the spam topic and other related threads like chatroom is magic).

The issue isn't necessarily the amount of spam, because compared to other forums I visit I feel this one has been fairly tame. The issue is the derailing of actual, serious threads, or too many non-serious threads being created that should have simply been a reply in the official spam thread.

You have your dedicated places for it. Use them.

There also seems to be a rush for post counts, judging from how many newer members seem to accumulate an insane number of posts within a short period of time. If you're replying to active threads, you stay on topic, and you're contributing something worthwhile to that thread, good on ya. If you're replying to as many threads as possible with little to no value in your posts and/or necro-ing old topics from last year, don't expect to be around much longer if you keep it up.

But right now there's people necro-ing old threads, sometimes with replies that aren't even on topic, people derailing serious threads, sometimes very serious threads that NEED to stay on topic. That's just simply unsat.

Who the hell cares about post counts anyway?

[colortwelve]

Interesting.

I'll be watching to see how this plays out. I realize that I've been sort of on the fence between those who take the site seriously and those who don't, so what I really think this'll come down to for me is the results. So here' to ya, Makkon and Lav, I hope you're successful in your endeavor. To everyone else... If you're a real musician, posting about music should be fun in and of itself, so I hope it's not too hard to make this transition. That said, I also enjoy your stupid-funny side. But I suppose that's what Skype is for (we also have a thread for that)

[VINXIS]

O man... I knew this thread was going to come....


I didn't make any new threads, but I feel so bad for contributing to worthless threads :\

[MatthewMosierMusic]

Thank you!! I absolutely agree. While I'm not exactly a long time member, I do remember when i first got here, it was really easy to get feedback and I could actually read every topic. Nowadays I feel like i spend the most time just hitting "Mark threads read" then looking for threads i KNOW aren't spam. Spam has become routine for me, and I didn't even realize till now. Hopefully we can get back to how it was.

[Conduit]

I personally haven't really been bothered by the spam, honestly I didn't even notice it was becoming a problem. (Necro-ing, however, I have noticed, and it pisses me off to no extent.)

However, I do believe that this is a place for music and improvement. Anything you do to limit spam I'm fully supportive of. If people want to have a laugh with some friends they can use skype or spam threads.

[timbaer]

I have indeed noticed that I've been coming here less and less. Thanks for taking action, guys. Hopefully things will change for the better.

[K3WRO]

Thank you Makkon for this post , the forums were starting to fall apart

Ok, sometimes, it's ok to act silly and all that, you know, it's just who we are, but It's a little going out of hand.
You know, all the meaningless jokes are starting to leak out of the spam/community thread and started leaking in serious places like Contests and Technique threads,
and I'd like to apologize, Honestly, It's kind of my fault, I wasn't serious or mature in any way, I let the spam break free.

I'm Sorry

[Captain Ironhelm]

Thank you, Makkon. I really appreciate all you do for all of us.

[bartekko]

There is a better place for chit-chat than the forums. It's called the IRC channel. Hell, it's even better for feedback than the forum, because there always is at least one person who would listen to your song immediately and give you feedback. It's also more civil than skype chats, and doesn't require invitation, so anyone can join.

[R-Y-S-E]

I didn't join that long ago, so this site has always been the same for me

But over 90% of the forums I've been to have worse spam (/pointless comments) problems than this one, to be honest. Although, I think it's a good idea that there are some more serious threads/posts n' stuff. I don't think I've ever made any pointless posts except in the spam thread, so I think I'm okay

You should make a forum section called 'MLR Prison'. Members that spam get the 'Criminal' title and can only see the 'MLR Prison' section of the forum. To be allowed back into the normal MLR forums, they must make 10 (but only up to 2 a day, so it's like a 5 day ban) worthwhile forum threads/posts in the prison section (visible members can view it too, so they can reply, etc), then they're allowed back onto the normal forums. But if they spam again (unless in the spam thread), they'll be banned permanently (or you can send them back to prison ). The prison should also have a thread called 'How not to post on the MLR forums' (that they MUST read) then once they return to the normal forums, they'll have learnt to be good forum members. If they spam prison then the number of worthwhile threads/comments they must post doubles, or ban them permanently if they get out of hand. (A serious idea, not spam )

[vladnuke]

I love posting in the music threads, always good to give people meaningful feedback, but you're completly right, we have very few people giving feedback. More of that needs to happen.
Also, yes, derails are bad. Even on pointless topics.
Especially on pointless topics, because then it just pulls away from decent topics.

But even with this and what has been said before, I still find this one of the most open and interesting communities. It's filled with people who have passion and talent, and use it to create wonderful things. You guys are 100% alpha. But it's also filled with the same kind of attention-whoring dickishness that comes with this, and I've been subject to it too. My guess is that someone is going to read this, and then still act like an attention whoring dick, because one can, and one wants to show this. And you guys are going to ban him, because it's your job to weed out the biggest assholes.

And/or, we can all agree that many people on the internet in general are awkward fucks who act like children who need a meme to latch onto because that's what they imagine humor to be, and that absolutley no place will be clean of this shit.

All in all, just, before you post, be cool. Make sure that it holds some sort of merit, beyond stroking your cock. Read the whole damn thread, or at least part of it.

Don't be a dick.

[prettiestPony]

I would also like to make a note:

Threads older than 6 months that are revived (aka necroposting) will be locked without further comment.

Well, why not make that a forum feature then? Automatically lock all threads over 6 months. Assuming someone can figure out the code for it.

It looks like someone posted some snippets for doing that here, but I've only glanced at the page, and I'm not really familiar with phpBB's internals anyway.

[Freewave]

I'm glad Makkon made a thread about this. One of the biggest issues seems to just waves and waves of new users and not a lot of people who choose to stick around and remain a presence over time. Whether they get sick of all the new faces, the immaturity, or just don't need to learn further from this place I can't say. I've always thought MLR is like a school for music where a lot of the people that come on really need to learn to perfect their technique to advance themselves as musicians. Right now it's more like a public high school than a university. Making music takes months just to get your footing, a load of hours over weeks to develop a track, creativity, technique, and a lot of luck for people to even see your track once it's completed. People need to understand that when they join here that it's a lot of work. There is no getting around that. That's a real commitment if you're going to sign up and call yourself a "musician" and not just a kid mucking around with FL. This is a music forum first and foremost and there should be a level of maturity that comes with being here and a desire to learn, be focused on music, and not just hang out socially.

[Habanc]

Well, that was the most necessary slap to the face I've ever seen.

... It really is kinda shaming when reality comes rushing back in and you start to wonder whether you contributed to it. If I did, well then I am very sorry. Regardless, I did notice less and less feedback in the music section (The first song I posted, I think way back in March or February, got six replies... You really don't see that much now).

I can feel that we'll have a surge in posts in the music section for a couple of days/weeks. But is that really enough? I think a more, I don't know, a more community mindset needs to be brought back. No offense intended in the slightest, but we're all on the same boat here. If any of us were signed musicians, would we really be here right now, looking for help and criticism? Plus, I'm assuming we all have a good level of love for MLP.

The point I'm getting at is that this site, as Makkon stated, was meant to be a community of learning and growing, for seeking knowledge and increasing your skills. Since I'm also assuming a bunch of us here have learned and grew due to this site, why not give back? Perhaps just make a goal to help a few people each week, as in, sitting down with them and even asking questions to attempt to help more. I think as people start focusing on helping and growing, spam posts will begin to remove itself.

I'll openly admit that I give MLR alot of credit for what I've learned about music production. If it wasn't for this community, I'd probably still be making horrible failtrance and mix it by solely increasing the volume. So, from the bottom of my heart, I am sorry for any problems/spam I may have caused, and thank you, Makkon, for all you have done.