See spam on the site? Report it here and help the forum mods find it that much quicker!

Welcome: How to Start and What to Know

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September 2012 Spam Offensive Veteran

Basic info / FAQ :

Red-X spam to flag it, and post in the Naughty List for an admin to notice it even quicker. Different admins have different abilities to move the thread to the Spam forum, delete a comment or thread, delete a user, etc.

Some spam is obvious. (Semi-gibberish from new users in Alabama Nepal, offering counterfeit passports or viagra or online betting, etc.)

Do not quote URLs in spam comments, since quoting their URLs simply helps the spammers spread their spam links more. (And increases the probability that someone will click them and get hit by malware.)

Kickstarter/crowdfunding links (and even linkless hype) are allowed in only 3 places in the forums, and should otherwise normally be marked as Spam:

• the Press Releases forum (but only one thread per kickstarter, or a comment in that forum's sticky thread for crowdfunding announcements)
• the Kickstarter forum
• the particular game's own forums. (KS-linking posts in other forums of that specific game, e.g. General, can be flagged Wrong Forum (rather than as Spam) to possibly be moved to the game's own Crowdfunding forum, based on an admin's assessment. If a thread is primarily about the campaign then it should be in the Crowdfunding folder. It is fully possible for a thread that includes a link to the campaign to be primarily about Rules, or Strategy, or appropriate for the General folder.

We allow for a single Press Releases thread for promoting a project. Any updates should be made to that original threads through edits and/or replies. Please do report instances of multiple threads posted in Press Releases to promote a project.

(Game-related non-game items (e.g. kickstarter for special gaming tables) in Outside the Scope of BGG are provisionally OK.)

The policy is to delete threads/comments with kickstarter links posted in other forums, not to move them to a correct forum. This policy is to discourage people continually posting them inappropriately with no penalty. (At rpggeek, exceptions might be made to move instead of delete.)

Users are not allowed to post commercial threads about things they have their own financial interest in, e.g.:

• "I have a 1st edition copy of this game for sale" (such sales should be done through the marketplace, not the forums)
• "Here is a link to my website selling custom widgets for this game." (This is simply commercial spam.)
• "Here is a link to my thread in the Kickstarter forum which has details about my live Kickstarter." (this is still promoting your kickstarter)

Blog policy:
Blog posts are allowed to include kickstarter links. Comments to blog posts that are promoting a kickstarter (especially in cases where it isn't related to the blog post itself) should be flagged.

Guild policy:
Guild posts can be flagged and will be judged on a case by case basis by moderators.

Useful tips:

• Subscribe to dubious new users (or already obvious spammers) to more quickly notice if they start posting (more) spam so you can flag it immediately.
• Look at a spammer's contributions tab on their profile to see their other recent posts and other activity.
• Not only thread comments: spammers sometimes also edit BGG wiki pages, add geeklist comments, create spam blogs, etc.
• To see recent site-wide forum posts, view https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/browse/region/1?sort=active or https://boardgamegeek.com/recentadditions
• Searching the site (via BGG's search or via external search engine) for unusual spam-related words (e.g. "aborsi" after a spate of Indonesian abortion pill spam) has sometimes discovered old unnoticed spam.
• Do a general web search for the username and a few key words from their post to see if they spammed other websites with the same comment.