Proposal: Can we do something more positive with spam?
Asked by Radu Dumitriu:

Instead of deleting it, I think we better replace it's content with something more meaningful, not necessarily related to Atlassian, but at least informative.

Of course, retagging should be mandatory, let's say to "former-spam" or "intellingent-spam" or something (open to suggestions)

Like for instance, I was reading today this article: <http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/30/veggies_in_spaaace/> and if I want to share it with you, I would edit the first spam and change from "Cheap watches" to "Lettuce in space", and retag the thing to "former-spam".

Instead of fighting it all the time, maybe it's time to embrace it, our way.

You can get more social that that.

What do you think ?


Answers:
author: NikE
body: Personally, I think that is an awesome idea... (and you might be interested in <http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/02/air-filtering-plants-indoors-air-quality-benzen-formaldehyde.php> )

However, I think we need to keep the site as on target as possible. We have been ramping up policies (and more importantly tools) to fight spam...the spam filter had to be turned off temporarly. If you want to have some good-spirited fun when you kill a spam post, I don't see any problem with it, but I think we should delete the post as soon as we can.

I will definitely bring up your idea at the next meeting and thank you (all) for your help moderating.

comments: author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Would it be possible to do something like hide posts that have been flagged as spam until a moderator can confirm that the flag is correct?


author: NikE
body: That is the ideal situation, but I believe the functionality is not there. That idea is already being explored. There are some spam mangement changes in the pipeline, just not sure which ones at this time.


author: Kinto Soft
body: I think this proposal unveils a lot of hypocrisy.  

Be more social?  

I got negative votes from you because I spoke about my plugin at the Atlassian's Answers. A lot of people said that Answers was not the right place to speak about plugins which are really part of Atlassian's ecosystem. Even a person called me spammer.

Even today, plugin developers don't know whether they can use Answers to speak about their plugins because [this issue is still unresolved](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/ANSWERS-139).

And now.. do you want to welcome true spam and speak about anything while plugin developers are banned from here by you?

comments: author: Radu Dumitriu
body: I do not see where hypocrisy comes in, I can understand you're upset, but after all nothing prevents you to help the community, get karma points, moderate. Whatever ...


author: Kinto Soft
body: In my opinion, plugins are a great help for the community. But I don't understand how Atlassian allows it: plugin developers seem cows, they get the milk and later they invite them to not disturb. As plugin developer, I dont' feel myself belonging to this community.


author: NikE
body: Pablo - I understand your frustration. We love our community of plugin developers and we need to get the situation you reference sorted out. That, however, is a completly different issue from what this question was about. We are currently getting some good old fashon spam and our top users can only delete the content from them, leaving an ugly "this post was spam and was removed" issue floating around until one of the \[Atlassian\] admins gets on and deletes it. Radu and others are getting frustrated and/or bored with doing that each morning (as they get on the boards before I do) so he is propsing a little fun. This is likely not the path we are going to go with, but an interesting and fun idea nevertheless.


author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: Nik has already said that they're thinking about the support of plugin developers.

As a plugin developer myself, I **do** feel like a part of the community, because I can ask for help, look for guidance and sometimes help other developers get through problems I've run into. Answers is the right place for help. It does not feel like the right place to advertise or discuss them in detail, because that simply gets in the way of real answers. Looking through the forums, we had valid questions where people would try to "sell" their plugin as the right answer when it was completely irrelevant, or there were better options, and I really think that needs to be avoided. Although it is absolutely the right place to say "Have a look at plugin X, it *could* answer your question"


Tags: community