What are your thoughts on a forum section solely for spam?

[Shortie_]

Some forums that I have been a member of in the past have had a forum solely for just spam. They turn off the post count and allow members to just spam in the said forum.

What are your thoughts on this? Would you have a forum section solely for spam?

 

[zappaDPJ]

It wouldn't be appropriate on the forums I run but a few years ago I installed SMF on a domain with no defined niche and no spam prevention as an experiment. I let it run without management or moderation for a couple of years and during those two years it attracted thousands of members (or bots) and over a couple of million posts.

 

[meetdilip]

Spam is not always content that you dislike.

Spammers also post content that will make you suffer on your SEO. Bad links, copy pasted ( on 100s of forums ) text, bad images and more.

 

[Carlos X]

It wouldn't be appropriate on the forums I run but a few years ago I installed SMF on a domain with no defined niche and no spam prevention as an experiment. I let it run without management or moderation for a couple of years and during those two years it attracted thousands of members (or bots) and over a couple of million posts.

I saw something similar. 3 times, in fact.

I was a part of a large 2.5 Million post board, it had a what's called a "madhouse." Spam, chitchatting, trolling. Every thing you can throw at it. It was a private forum, at the peak it was chaos. It was actually inspired by two forums that had this model, but could never reach scale like this board - with 25 thousand members by the time it was sold. Everyone stopped going because of the drama, followed by Facebook, followed by crypto, and then the owner quietly shut down the forum. Talk about thousands down the drain. Idiots.

2 other situations were similar, because they are actually part of the same community. Its literally the same exact story of NeoGAF admins/mods splintered off to make ResetEra thinking they'll "do better." Turns out - THAT board also got splintered off - famiboards. And, AND... ResetEra GOT SOLD... for 5 Million. (I think..?)

The first board was sort of splintered off from IGN, but it was not a mass migration off ign, like NeoGAF was. It was its own board. A small, but thriving community that is only accessible if you registered. By the time it was shut down, a small section of that community splintered off to make a new community. It died because of drama. It had 1 million posts. The owner hated the drama.

What happened to that small community? It got killed by Kenny. (South Park reference) Once drama spiraled, the board was shut down. I forgot why, but I think its because the owner doesn't know how to keep the site running without ads or funding. When they tried to revive the site, they uploaded the database to upload website. I downloaded it, restored it. Put it on my site, emailed members, they got.. MAD.

I did it; I killed it. I got pissed off that's why.

 

[Gizmo]

I guess that forums target audience would be immature kids 😛

 

[Page]

I have not joined a spamming forum site before. I end up joining sites that have been contained with staff members. What's the point of wasting my time posting and spamming on a site that most people are not going to read it anyway but post like dogs and spam?

those types of sites would become dirty also, Might be wrong but would those people would just spam porn images? No one to ban or remove those crazy posts as there is no one to do anything.

 

[Nomad]

I have not been a member on any forums that were primarily created for spamming. I am also not a member on any forum where there is a section created just for spamming.

 

[Deleted member 60612]

I've experimented and toyed with this idea in the past, but I eventually closed down the forum sections that permitted spam-posting. It tended to attract too much drama and spam-bots to the site, and was generally a waste of everyone's times: Members and our mods. I see forum-games and off-topic forums as slightly different though, as meaningful discussions do happen there

 

[Ravenfreak]

I'm currently on a forum that a few Sonic fans have been spamming. (Long story short, a forum was created about a decade or so ago that was stealing source code from various Sonic hacks. The admin abandoned the forum but members from throughout the sonic community has been spamming it ever since.) This is the only forum that is full of spam that I'm on.

 

[Reverie]

I was on a forum that it's whole purpose was to be spamming and trolling. Everyone signed up with different names for the most part. It included trolling and drama, but it made things interesting honestly. It spiced up the community because at that point it was just all the same members at every forum. This was a fun experience back in like 2008?

Forums that have an area for just spam - I think that's okay if it's a premium thing where it's not see-able on the index. I would still set a rule on the forum to be appropriate, but have fun. memes and etc would be okay. Bullying type behavior would be a no go though and things that aren't exactly safe for work may be questionable as well.

 

[Kale]

Hello Gaia Online chatterbox

I have no issue with it myself as it keeps those people from spamming elsewhere