[ghoti]

There's a worrying trend here to jump on people who start new threads when they haven't posted much. Often, their postings are called spam, or the more senior members and moderators here are very skeptical of them and their threads get locked. This has come up today with the iLaces keynote, and before that with the Youth Tech Awards and other stuff.

What bugs me about these incidents is this: First-time posters here may not have a question. They may have read the forums for some time and then actually have something to contribute to. Why should they have to post in other threads first? And how are they supposed to do that if they're newbies? Don't you think that newbies might have something different to contribute, too, like, umm, a mock keynote?

AppleNova is about as spam-free and focused as a webforum can be, and that's great. That is due in large part to a strict policy on spam (and other problematic posts) and strict enforcement. But let's try to keep this place welcoming to new members, and not throw them off by flaming them when they are trying to contibute something.

---

As an appendix, here are some comments on spam and email harvesting.

Generally, spam is generated by people trying to sell you things, or who are otherwise trying to make money by posting here. Here are a few examples, how people might make money from websites:

• By selling stuff. The KeyCaps guy is a good example for this, and there have been others. This is the most obvious.
• By linking to sites with ads. Many blogs now have AdSense or some other form of ads on them. Linking to your blog is frowned upon for that and other reasons.
• Pyramid schemes. You know, the "iP0d!! MAC m1n1!!1!" types. iPods etc. aren't free, and the people posting these things are trying to benefit from other people's spending.

And now about harvesting email addresses by posting in forums:

Seriously guys, email addresses are harvested from the web, and bought from other spammers. Nobody puts up a website and then "spams" forums to have a bunch of people submit emails addresses (especially when they also have to write something, how many people would do that?). Check your spam boxes from time to time for current pricing of email addresses by the million.

[Wrao]

I agree wholeheartedly. Thing is, if the user is genuinely just interested in sharing something they've done, they will also be interested in sticking around to hear what people think about it. If they were just spamming or laming, they'd leave immediately after posting and all our insults and ridicule would go unheard.

People get freaked out whenever a new-poster has a link in their post, it doesn't matter what the link is to. SPAM is easily noticeable and unearths itself. Except in the case of messiahtosh of course.