An example of spam.
Spam is something that is against the Community Guidelines. Examples include making duplicate forum topics, advertising oneself on others' threads, posting nonsense or gibberish, typing random keys on the keyboard or posting off-topic.
Repeated spamming leads to warnings or even a ban. It is also highly discouraged among the TBGs Community.
Types of Spam[]
Spam can occur almost anywhere in the TBGs Website. Wherever it is, it should be reported.
Forum Posts[]
Spam comments or posts are irrelevant, nonsensical, or completely off-topic. Advertising your threads in unrelated topics is also considered to be spam. A lot of spam has been controlled by the "similar message" and Sixty-Second Rule features. In the forums, posting several duplicate topics is also considered spam.
Often newer users will post advertisements to their projects on more popular projects.
The trend of replying "low" on the first comment of a project is an interesting type of spam that has developed. These are often replied to with comments like "lower", which are replied to with "lowest". The goal is generally to get the lowest comment on the page, and usually develops on popular projects.
Linkspam[]
Linkspam is a form of spam that consists of links and images. Commercial spam is considered linkspam. Harmful links and images, including unrelated images, are also linkspam. To help prevent this, there was image ban once on TBGs and there will be new image rules in near future
ASCII Art[]
ASCII Art is the arrangement of text to look like a recognizable image. Often when posted, users will copy and paste it and post it themselves, which severely lengthens the web page and can be annoying to read through.
Some popular images are a thumbs-up, rage faces, skull, nyan cat, the Illuminati triangle, and the popular "Doge" meme.[2]
'Chain letter' Spam[]
Another type of spam is a comment telling the user to copy and paste it on other threads and then something good will happen such as romantic situations and good luck. If the user refuses to copy and paste (called "breaking the chain"), something bad will happen such as bad luck and even death. There's sometimes a backstory added to prove the claim and force the user to carry on the chain. It should always be reported since not only it's spam, it's also threatening.
Emoticon Spam[]
Emoticon spam, also known as 'smiley spam', is a type of spam which uses emoticons for no good reason. This also includes posting a big amount of emoticons (called "smiley wall") which can lag computers.
Commercial Spam[]
Commercial Spam is spam aimed at advertising websites or products. They are common in the TBGs forum in a form like this:
| “ | Hi! I'm [...] and I work in the [...] industry! Check out this website! [...]. | ” |
Another example of commercial spam would be
| “ | Good info. [spam link] | ” |
It is commercial spam because it does not contribute anything to the forum topic, and it has a spam link to a commercial site. Commercial spam can also be found posted on random topics or projects.
Spammers[]
A spammer is a user who spams constantly. They are usually created by people who are willing to misuse the site for spamming and advertising. Even though there are human spammers, there are also spambots (see section below). Spammers can risk getting banned.
Spambots[]
- Main article: Spambots
Spambots are programs written by spammers to create accounts for the purpose of spamming on websites automatically. Spambots are slowed down by certain features implemented to help stop them, such as slower posting times (for comments and forums posts) for New TBGers, email account confirmation to stop spambots from posting spam projects and comments, and IP bans to try to prevent future spambots from the same source from being created.