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4 May 2016 11:53 PM Posted by: Kat

Announcement regarding spam related contentViews: 1318

Dear Wolfies,
after an increase in chain mail and other spam related content the Wolfing Leaders have decided that after this News post is published and takes effect the users posting said content will result in receiving a 24hour ban as a strike on their account.


What does this mean?
Every user is responsible for their account. Recently new accounts have been made for the sole purpose of posting/reposting spam and/or chain mail. According to our Pack terms spam is not allowed and users who break this rule or contribute to sharing this kind of content will receive a strike. Furthermore, creating secondary accounts only for this purpose is disrespectful and it contributes to the rule breaking, not to mention the affect it has on the innocent users who have their Howls spammed.

Why now?
The Wolfing Leaders have made countless efforts in trying to prevent this as well as reminding the users about our existing rule. After seeing that there is no other temporary solution, we have decided to take action with this News Post.

We thank you for your understanding,
Regards,
Leaders


Howls (16)

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Spotty178 7 years, 11 months ago
What about the spam that's like for an example my mum has been posting for 7 days straight photos of nature and then she nominates someone each day to do it (its a way for people to remember nature) now post of this kind will they be countered as spam?Also I may not log in all the time but i may had a post i made and i log back in lets say a week later to check it? I have 20 replies so I a paw all of them (which is my way of saying to the person i read there reply) will i get banned for that? As in a way that is spam but i only do it cause i dont have the time now to log in every day.Just want to get some this cleaned up and answered to stop confusion
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Kat 7 years, 10 months ago
Picture chains aren't really spam unless they're really excessive. No that's not spam because you're a-pawing 20 different people probably and you will not get banned for it.
The spam and chain mail messages we're highlighting have really gotten excessive and out of hand.
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Spotty178 7 years, 10 months ago
Ok but for at moment i've been chatting with MythicalShadow on a post back and forth and we've both been apawing our replies. When would that get to the stage it would say get flagged?
I know what you meaning Kat and yes i know it gets out hand (use drive me nuts when i went through school and got stupid chain mail emails) but I'm just trying to work out the boundaries to what this goes to, as I must not be only wolfling here trying to work them out.
I will be sad to miss those chains of for example one i seen about you've been hugged, send this on to next person to show someone loves them. I can't remember if it was here or somewhere else I read it but I knew it was "Spam" but i personally liked it as its like well someone loves me and wanted pass it on, but i did feel that others may felt "left out" from it but then in does happen, and who knows it could be making its way around to find you
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MinniHowl 7 years, 10 months ago
You cannot spam a-paws because you can only a-paw a post once. Chain mails however, can be re-posted several times all over the place without any limitations that is what we don't allow. Don't worry, you will always be told/warned before banned.
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Spam, including A-Paw spam, correct, or no? Just making sure. Kodi has wrote a howl about a-paw spam and I'm not sure if this is including that or it's just chain messages & other messages that are some kind of spam.
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Amphitrite 7 years, 11 months ago
Mhm. A-paw spam does count
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Kat 7 years, 10 months ago Edited 7 years, 10 months ago
a-paw spam is not what we are trying to highlight here; while we do not approve of it but we cannot really prevent it unless a user reports to us that they feel annoyed by it (if someone had spammed them). Unless it is reported, which it hasn't been much so far, the user spamming will not receive a ban strike.
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Spin 7 years, 11 months ago
Some of us like to post dumb shit, memes and other ridiculous crap on each other's profiles, and that includes spam and chain mail messages. Will we still be banned if it's only done on profiles belonging to users that happily receive such spam?
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Spin 7 years, 10 months ago
Spam is irrelevant and unwanted messages, but there is a problem with that definition; Some messages that are considered as spam to some people might be enjoyable to others. My friend could post a butt-load of messages on my profile that all say "B-)" and someone could think of it as HIGHLY OFFENSIVE spam if it was done on their profile, but I wouldn't be against it on mine because I find stupid shit to be funny. If these messages were shown publicly (on pack howls, for example), then I could see a reason for moderating that. Another site I visit has a 3 profile posts/status updates per day for every user policy because every status update and profile post made by everyone is shown on the front page. However, on Wolfing that isn't the case for messages left on our profiles by others, only our status updates are shown on the front page, and that's only if you have people added.

Long ass messages would be annoying and could probably cause lag for some people if not for the fact that Wolfing already counters it by adding the "read more" link. 

Would the COOL DOG chain mail message be okay if we removed the part where it tells people to send it to others? Or would it still be thought of as spam since it has no real meaning to it other than bringing an extremely cool dog into existence through simple ASCII art?

If you really need to moderate this stuff, it should be done case by case. If someone is receiving unwanted spam, they should ask the user to stop, and if they continue, contact moderation about it. But I feel all of this is kind of pointless because users can moderate their own profiles and block others. It's just more work for moderation, and honestly I do not want mods looking at my profile and assuming a post by one of my friends is irrelevant and unwanted and ban them for it when actually it's completely fine to me.

I get there was a chain mail message that was insulting an old user here, and moderating that was the right thing to do, of course, but that should fall under Wolfing Rule 1, which is to respect everyone. There was no need to create a new rule for policing our profiles, and the punishment is pretty hardcore as well for something so harmless that can be dealt with by ourselves.
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Vogul 7 years, 10 months ago
God bless you Spin
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Kat 7 years, 10 months ago
Spin, I agree with you. This is just a temporary solution for /excessive/ profile spam that is /intentionally/ forwarded. It would be nice to remove the part where it's 'needed' to be spread.
We will most likely rely on reports and handle those as excessive, hence the punishment mentioned in this News Post. As long as it isn't excessive on your profile either, it should be alright, in my personal opinion, and as long as you are fine with it.

No matter that your profile is also public section of Wolfing, it is your profile after all, and you have been given the option to remove howls from your profile for a reason.

As for your points for moderation on profiles, i see them and you have very good arguments. We just had to do something, for now. I hope everyone understands. Kodi is the only developer, and the option for us to remove howls (moderate them) is on it's way.