Question

There has been quite a great amount of spam lately. Lets take a minute to review what is spam and what is not.

Answer 1

Congratulation posts are actually considered spam...
But we do tolerate them for a day, for a few occasions:

- achieving a smartscore of 99
- a user's birthday
- some kind of holiday
- special achievement (like getting an award for something school related)

Another rule
- Only 1 post per user, the rest can congratulate the user in that post, no need to create a separate one.

So 3 different posts congratulating someone for getting a smartscore of 75 do not qualify.

-thomaster

Answer 2

examples of posts that are appropriate:

http://openstudy.com/study#/updates/571a7408e4b075db04a085c1
http://openstudy.com/study#/updates/5725af86e4b00ff203b80055

Answer 3

examples that are spam:

http://prntscr.com/azk1hf
http://prntscr.com/azk1pp
http://prntscr.com/azk1zt

Answer 4

So that is what I was saying considering posts that had already been made for the congrats post of @likeabossssssss

Answer 5

Thankyou for the reminder @rebeccaxhawaii :)

Answer 6

thx for the reminder @rebeccaxhawaii

Answer 7

Thanks for clearing that up rebecca

Answer 8

:)

Answer 9

@LegendaryPuppyMaster and ur still all about that post? ;)

Answer 10

lol OG my psot is their too lool xP

Answer 11

I find that many spam posters get high SmartScores very quickly because they:
1. Comment on other spam posts
2. Medal-for-medal
3. They talk A LOT on posts
4. They post A LOT

I mean, that is pretty obvious but I see these people move higher in the "ranking" just because they use this as a secondary social media platform.
It definitely seems like a prestige thing (getting fans, meadals, Smartscore) to me which makes it hard to stop. Maybe it should be driven home more that OS is a LEARNING site and not a forum?
I don't know. I like OpenStudy and there are great people here but it doesn't always feel like a learning site. Sometimes I get the same feeling that I get when I am on Yahoo Answers, not a good feeling to be clear.

OpenStudy needs to be social but I feel like there is not much separating it from other question/answer sites besides the Qualified Helpers. I suppose the question remains "How do we fix this?" I'd love to see OS to live up to it's full potential.

Sorry this turned into something less about spammers and more into me complaining about how OS reminds me of a forum but I feel like there is a correlation.

Answer 12

@Cecil_the_Weasel feedback from fellow users is always acceptable ^_^
Well, I got 99ss in 33 days, and that was purely from helping others, not participating in spam parties or chatting frequently...but I see where you're coming from :)

About the spam issue, it usually pops up when newer users join (not saying that this applies to everyone, but is what I had observed). In that case, all we need to do is inform them, and that's that. :3

Answer 13

Whoa, that's great! I don't think that all who gain points quickly are spammers, just many spammers tend to gain points quickly. I definitely have seen more new users making spam posts lately. (I say lately, I'm still pretty new here ☺) I appreciate the people who politely correct spammers because they help the spam problem quite a bit in my opinion. As irritating as spam can be, I'm glad more people are joining OS