Spam out the wazoo ... annoying drones set out to pull attention to more spam, themselves or who knows what ... and apparently now plagiarism. I just wonder how much of that last thing there really is on this site that we might not know about.
I have to admit, it sort of feels that ever since the AdSense stuff was removed, Mr. or Ms. or Mrs. or just SoulCast ... you have sort of left us all to our own devices. The above mentioned is running amok and we're all sitting ducks. I understand that you, or those of you who run the site, may be busy with your own lives and heck, maybe you can't afford to run the site any longer so you're letting it dwindle away by neglect.
A lot of us really love this site though. We think of it as home. We have so much time, emotion and so much more invested here. It would be a shame for us all to have to hold on by our nails as we watch it slowly deteriorate and disappear, whether that be via a complete shut down or spammers and rude people taking over.
Is there any way you could maybe set us up to better handle this, and perhaps even take the strain off of yourselves? I know it would probably take a lot of time and work, and maybe even money (?), but in the long run perhaps it would be worth it. After the kinks get smoothed out, it might just mean less work for you, but better results for those of us who are still here ever day, or close enough to it. It would pay off in the future. I've got some ideas, and I know some of my fellow bloggers have GOT to have a few to throw in, or even improvements on mine!
- A sort of 'vote' system for users. If there is an offensive blogger who is going above and beyond the call of shittyness, let us all click a button where clicks will add up over time. Maybe once it's reached so many clicks, that person's account automatically becomes suspended. If it happens a second time, they get a longer suspension. If it happens a third time, well, three strikes, you're out, and their account gets automatically deleted.
- I get that there are loopholes with this. The person with the suspended account could easily create another one. Either that next one will get voted into suspension also and so on if they keep doing it, and if they have a life, then eventually they'll give up or they don't have a life and well, that's just sad for them anyway. Still brainstorming.
- Also, I am aware that it might be a good idea to limit how many clicks each user can do each day, or week. With that, I also understand that this can be abused via creating another account. Maybe we just need to make some more secure accounts so that becomes obsolete.
- A report system for inexcusable offenses, such as plagiarism. Perhaps a link to click that allows a brief message sent to an administrator, who then removes that person.
- I know, you'd have to find administrators. Maybe there would be a few voluntary souls, and then you wouldn't have to worry about paying for them. I know there are a number of trustworthy people here who could do it, but I don't know how things are run currently, so ....
- Extending this, perhaps we could even get a 'spam' button for blogs. This might require a similar system to the above mentioned about plagiarism, purely because somebody could easily just not like another blogger and decide to call their posts spam.
- Perhaps instead of that sort of a system, maybe work with the tagging system so that any 'advertising' posts are and must be categorized as such (might require another sort of report/flagging system), and do not show up on the regular pages. They'd have their own section maybe, so that regular readers don't have to be bothered with them, but if somebody does want to check them out, they still can.
Just a few ideas. I know there are tons of thing I don't know about running a website, programming, etc., so I am not suggesting that you are doing poorly, but just that things could be running a little smoother and it would be nice if we could have some of the influence/lend a hand here since we use the site and are here more regularly.
I just hate to see other great bloggers feeling poorly about blogging here, or even thinking of leaving. I also personally don't like feeling doubts in that maybe it's time to move on, or to find another place to let my thoughts out. I'm interested in a little action about this, even to help if I can anywhere.
Anybody else have any ideas, thoughts, etc.?
