Hi, it's me again in a some-thread-got-deleted-kill-the-spam-filter thread!

Disclaimer: I'm not blaming you guys for complaining. I'm not blaming you guys for using the spam system. I'm blaming the lack of good solutions that are quick to implement (and disclaimer: that's a personal opinion).

Disclaimer 2: This post points out why some ideas simply won't work. I don't hate any of you and nothing is a personal attack, just explanations.

Disclaimer 3: There's no "we're working on a techy thing to make this work!" solution at the end. Yes, that's how it works.

On the ideal forum, this would mean that no user would ever use the "spam" button to mark a post or thread that he or she simply disagrees with - that's what the +/- buttons are for, right? Unfortunately, we live in a world that isn't ideal, and some people DO use the spam button on things other people don't think are spam. So yes, advertisements about cheap shoes from New York designers like the ones on the wishlists disappear... But so do posts and threads.

So, let's take a look at some of your solutions!

Can you imagine the reactions of people who simply want to ask about games and now are suddenly forced to pay to use a simple forum? Or people who HAVE bought a game, encountered an issue/don't know how to finish a level/want to ask for recommendations unable to post because their game was from a promo or simply low priced and didn't let them cross the magical threshold?

That wouldn't be good for us - or for you guys, with some people buying that $5-worth of games just to bitch about how horrible we are for doing so ;)

I actually find the idea of someone getting an icon of an ugly troll face added to their avatar for, say, 48 hours after they collect some number of "troll" reports rather funny - however, I'm afraid our devs don't consider the level of work it'd take them to implement this nearly as hillarious. Plus, while brilliant, it doesn't solve the problem.

You know those "we'd love to do this if we had time" lists each company has with stuff like "buy a cabinet for the Marketing department so their posters and roll-ups aren't flung all over the place" or "tell the office canteen to use salt and pepper so everything isn't bland" and "redesign the whole forum"? Yeah, we have one of those. The ETA of most projects hovers between 2067 and 3060 unless a Higher-Up declares it's a priority to-do ;) or, it's stuff we'd love to do but there's other projects (*cough*Galaxy*cough*) keeping us from it.

There isn't an amount of moderators, support grunts or forum-trained chimpanzees who could go through each forum and wishlist spam report and click a yes/no button.

If we do the former, you'll be flooded by ads like the Wishlist is! If we were to pick who's to have the spam button disabled, we'd need an army of moderators, support grunts or forum-trained chimpanzees, and as we've established, even that's not gonna do much.

This would be a brilliant idea, if only we hadn't written the whole forum system ourselves, which some of you may have noticed. That means a developer would have to go through ALL of the code and change things in appropriate bits and test and QA and beta test it before it's released. So he might as well do a whole forum overhaul. So... Remember that "list of projects we'd love to do" line? Yeah.

This really IS the best idea. The question is, will they?

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I'm sorry. As promised, this post really wasn't conclusive. But hopefully it'll add to the discussion or show you why this is a bit more complicated than it may seem ;)

So do you best to save the spam button for when it's relevant, and click the minus when you disagree with posts - pretty please?

We'll add it to our project list for future generations! ;)

The thing is, a user thought the thread was spam. We disagree. A user thinks a thread is spam again. We disagree again. We make them unable to fully use the forums. They disagree. They hate us from then on until forever.

And what if we're more lenient about what's spam and what isn't than some of the more content-conscious users, or if we're a bit too harsh? We create ourselves an army of people who think we've unfairly taken away some of their forum rights [edit: or that we unfairly left someone with rights while taking them from someone else - plus, this also requires manpower that we're currently putting into faster support, better site content, more games etc].

We're not into moderating or policing forums, and there'll always be those who are using a tool in an unreasonable way who will disagree about their use as being unreasonable.

And I see your concerns about threads disappearing - but at the same time, we can't remove the existing spam filter, as it's the best we've come up with so far to weed out serious spam from the forums, and don't want to take away rights from users.

You're saying a lot of things that I agree with assuming a very pessimistic scenario - maybe you should go outside more often? ;) (just kidding, no offence meant, and none taken at your post)

One thing that I do want to clarify that I don't think I've said quite as I wanted earlier:

I do agree with you on that, but as I said previously, the forums are something we'd love to work on but it'll take a lot of hours (that we're now devoting to Galaxy, releases etc) to handle - and that's the company approach.

Yes, we need to look into the spam filter and make it easier for us to manage and for users to not abuse, but at the same time, we also need to roll out major stuff we've promised a long time ago. (Running a company is just like a really interactive strategy game now that I really think about it).

Yes, we have plans of changing things - who doesn't! - but finding the time to make those plans a reality is kind of like a young adult trying to juggle university, a job, new big-person responsibilities such as rent, social life, studying, free time, traveling, hobbies, going to the gym... Sometimes, you gotta pick which project to get to first and which to put off a few months ;)