basically

posting using only emoticons are not allowed.
General Forum Rules
just read the rules and youll be fine

^^^ thanks for reminding me sir.

07. Observe the use of emoticons. Putting too much emoticons in your post is not allowed. Posting more than 2 emoticons continuously is not allowed. Using only pure emoticons for your post is a heavy indication of spamming. Same rules apply for Smileys.

but kaito sir what about the 1st image i post? what's the rule stated that is spamming?

@zero_shiki

1st picture..

The topic is about where one can find SCANDAL CDs in the US, so that should be what the discussion is about, so even thought that's the topic title, what the author wants to discuss is what will it be about. So as you can see you post has no relation to the topic whatsoever therefore considered a SPAM.

This can be a lesson to the repliers to always read the first post as it is the most important and also a lesson to topic starters to make a more clear topic title to avoid confusion.

2nd picture...

Well yes you only posted an emoticon which is a violation of the rule you posted, though there's a quote there, that's still considered the quoted person's post and not yours.

alright thanks mc

I'm still a bit iffy on the spam system. I mean, rules like "don't cross the intersection on a red light" are easy to follow. But judgment calls like spam prevention, coupled with no clear guidelines and a simple "don't spam" order are not.

For example, this post of mine:

Belz... wrote:Hey. I also got a bit emotional at the end of Armageddon... I knew Tomo and I were made for each other !

Is considered spam in this thread. But this one:

chiy102 wrote:Wow, thanks for the sub~~

Is not. I'd think that an endless string of "thank you"s in a thread would be considered spamming, at least by the original definition of the word. Now, you might say that my post was a bit off-topic, but spam ? It wasn't any more content free than most posts in that thread.

And now I learn that the spam status NEVER returns to normal ? The only way to clean it is to get banned for a week ? That's positively bizarre.

I mean, some sort of actual guideline would be nice. Sorry for the bother, but I'm a rules guy so, to me, rules have to be clear and moderation has to be transparent. It's hard to know what to avoid, especially since most posts on this forum are relatively light-hearted and content-free.

Thank you in advance for some clarification.

To be perfectly honest, I wasn't too fond of the system here.

All of this (I believe) is because of our current forumotion limitations.

I don't know if mc~ has any plans in the future to find a better solution than what we currently have, so I'll let him reply to this.

Most of the "spam" meters/notifications are completely done manually by us mods right now.

When I said completely, I mean almost everything.

I'd agree if we had a Thank you button, then there would be no need to write a post saying thanks, but since we dont, I think its fair enough to thank whoever helped/shared something you wanted with a post.

I cant help you with the other issue though, I dont usually mark posts as spam unless its completely off topic.

Well first of all there is no stable way of putting up a thanks system here so there would really be posts like that. Like Noodles said, thanking the contributor because of his/her post is fair enough. Though clear intention of spamming "thanks" just to increase post is an exemption.

As for your post, I also believe it can't be considered a SPAM. For now I don't know who placed SPAM on you since the moderator did not left any name on it like what I always do. I apologize for not guiding them properly to always do it that way. Reporting what moderators did that you think is not right is appreciated as it helps us to see our mistakes.

As for the rule that it cannot be restored. I've seen a lot of forum before that has the same warning system that cannot be restored as well. On my count, ever since the SPAM prevention system was made, there has been no member who has been permanently banned because he/she totally ran out of SPAM bar. It's because it's really easy not to spam. There are some who spammed once or twice and never did again. There are also members who didn't received a SPAM even once, so I don't see why we should be afraid of losing all the SPAM bar.

And as for everything else you said, thanks for voicing it out. I'll be needing a talk with the staffs regarding what needs to be done in this system.

Are we informed if our post is a spam? like a mail in our inbox so that we are aware?

I'm worried because I think some of my posts I think may be related to some of your examples or am I just exaggerating? don't know what to say, I mean can't think of a word to express.. sorry for my veeeery baaad english .nosebleed.

Man this not good... I'm losing it.... O_O how do we get the bar back to clean is there anyway? Or does it always stay like it?

I don't know if this is just happening for me, but I noticed that the spam bars are missing? Did you guys turn this off or is it a bug within the Forumotion forums? I'm hoping it's the latter that happened...

I can more or less understand why my posting is marked SPAM but how come the posting after mine that just says 'Love Haruna' is OK but mine is not ?

Lexian wrote:I don't know if this is just happening for me, but I noticed that the spam bars are missing? Did you guys turn this off or is it a bug within the Forumotion forums? I'm hoping it's the latter that happened...

I'm not sure if you still see it, but it is there.

tonymiller wrote:I can more or less understand why my posting is marked SPAM but how come the posting after mine that just says 'Love Haruna' is OK but mine is not ?

Remember that the SPAM are marked manually, so if the mod who marked your post marked yours and not the one after it, he was probably not online when that post was made.

Considering that most posts outside of the "talk" sections are of that nature, I'd say 80% of everything on SH should be marked SPAM as well.

Topics are created to ensure people know the information and know what the bands are doing, not inviting people to go in and have a great chat and make comparisons or such. if you want to say, stay within the topic, and staffs like us won't do anything, or just come shoutbox and say. we don't create shoutbox for nothing.

by claiming that 80% of the posts will be marked SPAM, you need to think carefully. cause basically, I won't do that as most of our members here understand the rules and understand what is OFF TOPIC and what is ON TOPIC, and it can be clearly seen from here.

I find it hard to believe that a post containing the following:

Spoiler:

Can be not considered as spam, while a thoughtful one with content, discussing a picture in the very same thread, can be.

As for your comment, we obviously have differing understandings of what "on topic" means. I have the impression that the moderating team is willing to neither discuss the issue nor make the rules clearer; and the reason why most members evade the spam policy is because they're not actually having discussions, here. Which is odd, considering that this is a web forum.

I've honestly never encountered this situation on other forums, and I find it terribly unfortunate, as we have a fine community, here.

for those comments, yes, i will apologize for not marking the comments as SPAM, since it is my over-negligence, cause they are indeed SPAMs.

like i said, when we create a topic, yes, you can comment. but stay on topic. or if you feel you really need something, go to SCANDAL Talk, and say it out.

what for like an example, the recent media show, from a talk, it can lead to civil war, corruption. that is obviously off topic. and is not the 1st time i should say.

Indeed. I understand that.

But take for example some innocuous comment on, say, the Mami picture thread. If someone wants to comment on the picture, ask a question or answer one... the idea to create a thread about it seems nice at first.

But that amounts to creating a whole thread, linking back to that picture, making a post, and hoping to get more than 2-3 replies. Would such a thread really be worth it ? I would think that, so long as the conversation doesn't go on for more than a very short number of posts, or goes woefully off-topic as you have illustrated, such an independent thread would be unnecessary.

The result, of course, is that no one ever creates those mini-threads. And since they don't, they get warned. In effect, discussion is therefore prevented. This is what I am finding unfortunate.

I saw what Tony post in the Haruna thread and I have to say: I'm with Tony and Belz on this.

BB wrote:what for like an example, the recent media show, from a talk, it can lead to civil war, corruption. that is obviously off topic

Maybe yes, but remember that was the context of the topic that led the conversation toward that side. The spirit is always maintained, I think. Just about different criteria for the same thing.

Belz... wrote:I've honestly never encountered this situation on other forums

Me either...

Since we're all talking about this topic, I guess I should talk about it too.

I'm going to dissect this now. The topic was originally about the video, and the video was pretty much an interview. Okay, let's move on. Page 1, users start off talking about Mami, the hosts, and "what a man prefers". I have no problem with this, as it all relates back into the OP.

Now let's go to page 2. Things are looking good again, until the last part of the post that ends with:

Agree with Belz again! of course she have!... And suppose that the new PV of the girls is set in the beach and they wear a bikini... you are not going to look and will feel morally offended? come on... Not make a drama where none exists. There is a world out there with hunger, corruption and civil wars...

Right after this post, everything just split apart. That one post was the catalyst of the off-topic afterwards, and you can even say it's like the butterfly effect.
Right after, users talk about other celebrities visiting other countries, and then the civil war post. I actually don't mind the other stuff about the beaches, the dark side, etc. But you can see from where the thread originally was, to what it deviated to.

Rinaland wrote:Maybe yes, but remember that was the context of the topic that led the conversation toward that side. The spirit is always maintained, I think. Just about different criteria for the same thing.

I'm not sure how a civil war is a different criteria for Mami having a nice body, the hosts, or any context of the interview. If I missed anything, please point it out.

You're basically saying, if we're on the Haruna picture thread (I'm using your signature for example), and we talk about that orange chair. And then end up talking about furniture, then all of a sudden talk about orange dinosaurs, does that on-topic since the "spirit of orange" is still there?

Belz, I'm not sure what you're saying. But let's say you're in the Mami picture thread, you see some shampoo or something that she uses, and want to question about that. Okay sure I don't mind. But don't go talking about some other random shampoo you use or stylist you go to.

I'm not sure if you understood it all since we have different meanings of spam. If you still are not sure with what we deem "off-topic" or "SPAM worthy", don't hesitate to ask so I can continue to clarify.

No, Plutonium. I was definitely not talking about that topic, but about Tony's post and the forum in general.

Obviously, Dul7's post was quite obviously off-topic, and very personal to him. (Although I probably wouldn't moderate it since there was no follow-up).

But I've gotten warnings and PMs about discussions that were clearly related to whatever was the topic of the thread, mainly pictures and videos, and this is what I was referring to.

Okay, do you think you understand the system a little more now?

As for the warnings you've gotten that have SPAM marked on them, send me copies of them in a PM and I'll look into those.

And like I've said, forumotion limits us to do everything manually. Lots of problems can be caused by this.

Since I've been busy with school, I'm not really that active as I was before. So I'm not really updated with these threads you guys are talking about, but I made the staff fill me in and did some research myself as well.

What we're saying here is stay on-topic. Spam are post that are out of topic or does not help the topic at all, I dunno what part of that is hard to understand. Forum is where topics are created for it to be discussed, not post random things. Posting random things will just invite more random post like from the example Pluto mentioned above, that will just make the thread a chat box which is not. Say a member wants to find good info in the form of discussions in the thread, so he reads the thread, then he sees those random post that has no relation with the topic, will that help? No, he'll just waste time scrolling down these spams.

The random post I'm talking about here includes the "discussion" you are talking about. When I updated myself with the LOVE SURVIVE and the BABY ACTION thread, I saw there discussions that are supposed to be discussed in a forum and it helped me a lot. Not a random comment or a random joke that clearly does not help. I've been here for the longest time and I've seen a lot of good discussions and some "discussions", some because we do our best to prevent it. So if you say 80% of the post here are spam? Then that's clearly wrong.

Chat box are made for a reason inside forums. Take there random discussion and not look for a topic and start a random discussion.

About that creating a new thread just to ask something about a picture or comment on it, I find it stupid just from the start. If you want to ask something or make a comment then do so in the thread, I made those threads in one so that everything is there already and not make different threads for every picture. But if you're comment is "HARUNA KAWAII", then that's clearly a SPAM, should be marked, deleted, and warned. I can say "HARUNA KAWAII" or "Love Haruna" anytime I want, I can say it in the chat box anytime I want, but I don't see how those kinds of post will help a thread progress, therefore they are spam.

And guys, why post here if you see these kinds of post and rant "why my post marked spam when this post is supreme spam?", don't you see a REPORT button?

There are only 8 staffs and we're not full time with the forum, we have school and work as well. I'm extremely busy with school, Eugene with the army, kono with work. So it's not always we'll see every post made here everyday, there are times we might miss something, the reason that Report button is there is for you to help us.

I've been a lot of forums and I've been in two who has been also tight when it comes to preventing spam. So if you've never encountered one then that forum is light on preventing it.

This system will continue as it is, it's a lot of job for us but it's needed to clear the forum from spam. And as Pluto said, everything is done manually. If only there's something in the settings that say "Automatically mark spam and warn member", then I would really love that. But there's none, so it's manually done and there are always disadvantages of doing things manually.

And again if you see a post that you think is SPAM, don't post here or make a new thread, use the report button. Thank you.

mc~ wrote:The random post I'm talking about here includes the "discussion" you are talking about. When I updated myself with the LOVE SURVIVE and the BABY ACTION thread, I saw there discussions that are supposed to be discussed in a forum and it helped me a lot. Not a random comment or a random joke that clearly does not help.

I'm not sure I understand, then, if you think that my discussion with aron94 about the single was on-topic or not.

So if you say 80% of the post here are spam? Then that's clearly wrong.

You should check the picture gallery from time to time. Most posts do not add pictures and do not contribute to the thread. Personally I have no problem with this, but when thoughtful posts are marked as SPAM, then I disagree.

About that creating a new thread just to ask something about a picture or comment on it, I find it stupid just from the start. If you want to ask something or make a comment then do so in the thread, I made those threads in one so that everything is there already and not make different threads for every picture.

Good. But then I'm even more confused about the warnings I've personally gotten in the past.

And guys, why post here if you see these kinds of post and rant "why my post marked spam when this post is supreme spam?", don't you see a REPORT button?

Because I personally see nothing wrong with those posts. Are you saying that Tony's post was reported by someone ?

Belz... wrote:I'm not sure I understand, then, if you think that my discussion with aron94 about the single was on-topic or not.

He said it helped him catch up while he was gone.

Belz... wrote:You should check the picture gallery from time to time. Most posts do not add pictures and do not contribute to the thread. Personally I have no problem with this, but when thoughtful posts are marked as SPAM, then I disagree.

I mark the posts spam when I see utter non-sense posts. Never have I marked your post once. Ever.

Belz... wrote:Good. But then I'm even more confused about the warnings I've personally gotten in the past.

As I said earlier, send me a PM and I will look into these for you. Human error is always there when the things are done manually. You will have to understand that. If you disagree with your warning, PM me and we'll go over it.

Belz... wrote:Because I personally see nothing wrong with those posts. Are you saying that Tony's post was reported by someone ?

I went through the report logs and it was not. Again, human error due to the fact that it was done manually by one of the mods. Issues? PM me and I'll look into it for you.

I can say this, not once have I ever received a PM about member's posts that are marked spam, because I've PMed them before hand about the reason. If you disagree with one mod, take it on to another mod and see where that stands.