Our forums have been experiencing increased levels of members joining the community with the sole intent of building back links and promotion of their signature links. These signature spammers do nothing but clutter our forums with loads of low-quality unwanted posts and is something we want to see the end of.
It is important to note that signature links at SitePoint are no-follow. You will not get a back-link by posting here.
So what is a fluff post?
A fluff post is a post that doesn’t add any value to the thread. Stuff like ‘nice post’, ‘that’s cool’, ‘that’s helpful’, ‘thanks for sharing’.
Our aim is to try to maintain a certain level of quality in discussions here. Please strive to ensure each post you make is:
Meaningful – say something of substance
Relevant – on topic and helpful, not generic advice
New – something that hasn’t already been said in the thread
Repeatedly making posts which are not meaningful and relevant, only making posts which are short generic advice, or primarily repeating what’s already been said will result in a warning. This warning is just a friendly reminder of these guidelines and will provide a link to our FAQs so that you can read up on the posting rules.
If the behavior continues, an infraction will be issued. An infraction for fluff posting carries 4 penalty points. Once a user accumulates 8 penalty points the result is a loss of posting privileges (in other words - do it again and you’re banned!).
How can you help?
We are building a number of internal processes to assist in identifying these signature spammers, but you, members of the community, are best positioned to help us eliminate this frustrating behavior. I ask that if you do see something that feels like signature spamming, please point it out to a forum staff member (you can report a post using the little red triangle).
We are hopeful that this will eliminate the problem once and for all without needing to resort to anything drastic and the forums are better for it.