Bot question: This forum gets the weirdest posts of any forum I've ever been involved with...

[ZedClampet]

and I've been involved with forums since the mid-90's. So many threads are made that are so vague that I have no idea what they are talking about. Usually these threads are deleted, so I assume these are being made by bots. What's the purpose of bots posting stuff that is basically nonsense? There are no links or anything. What are they getting out of it? As for the ones that maybe aren't bots, why? What's drawing these folks here and causing them to make an account and post something so random and so vague that there's no chance anyone knows what they are talking about? Maybe these are bots, too? It's just so weird to me.

 

[Frindis]

Some posts can be legit, it is just that not everyone is fluent in English, so it can be looked at as spam, when in reality it was never intended to be. Some like to post shait, it's just how it sometimes is. Just taking a quick glance at the Steam/Reddit forum discussions and you would drown in tons of nonsensical garble. Some posts without any link, will a lot of the time have those put in at a later stage and some are even so hidden that you might not even see them the first time. Often they do this because if they can get just one person to click on the link/buy something, then they could potentially earn money. As for bots, I don't believe we have many of them, but that is a field I'm no expert on.

 

[Colif]

We get lots of posts fishing for answers that don't seem to make it onto forums. I feel for the regulars who answer these things assuming the person asking is doing it in good faith but often the starter doesn't care about the answers unless they from a friend, or the op ends up getting banned and the entire thread disappears with them. So many threads lost that way.

The language barrier is a thing for sure. Shame only people who see the spam links now are mods and we not in a mood to click them.

I see some evidence for bots.

 

[ZedClampet]

Shame only people who see the spam links now are mods and we not in a mood to click them.

Okay, this makes a lot more sense to me now. These weird threads have links, but I can't see them.

Sometimes I like to sandbox Chrome and follow sketchy links just for fun