Originally Posted by CelestialBadger

... This, of course, is the problem of "spam". Cortalos and I discussed the word "spam" at great lengths earlier this evening and eventually settled, as a definition, on "Content that does not continue an unresolved issue previously discussed in the thread topic, continue discussion of the current topic(s), or warrant discussion of a completely unrelated issue." If anyone disagrees with this definition I'd be happy to discuss it with you as well. In the mean time, this seems like a reasonable definition to me.

Now, on to the main topic at hand...Chit-chat is for "casual discussion." This is my main point of contention with the "Now playing" thread. While I commend the people in the thread who tried to initiate discussion (Roach: "Any of you heard of 'The Gathering'?") I still do not see how this thread has any potential to develop into a discussion. So far we have had over 70 pages (that's almost 2000 posts) of people posting the song they are currently listening to, and the most discussion that we've had has been over whether Tatu can be demodded for closing the original thread. Can you picture this? Sitting around with your friends on a Friday night, every three minutes blurting out three words? This is not discussion. This is not a forum by definition. Correct me if I'm wrong, but we're trying to build a community here. A community is comprised of people who feel common ties to each other. Such ties are not developed by skipping to the quick reply box and typing in a song title. Doesn't it bother anyone else that this "casual discussion" could be carried through by a robot?

Finally, the last point that I'd like to make about the "Now playing" thread deals with the idea of stupid vs. non-stupid topics. Is there such a thing as a stupid topic? How should we judge spam? This is something that I've been debating with people ever since I joined this forum. Before I go into my take on this matter, I need to explain something. You all are correct in that my main intent behind posting threads in chit-chat was originally to force mods to take care of something that I considered to be a waste of space in chit-chat. The idea was to post topics which were similar in structure to the "now playing" thread, in that a one word answer would be enough to stay on topic. However, I was suprised by the outcome. Who would have thought that so much discussion could come out of a thread asking what the wattage of your lightbulbs is? This brings me to my final decision as to what is spam and what is not. I am in complete agreement with Cortalos on the definition that appeared earlier in this post. However, I'd like to expand upon it a bit and hopefully make it more clear. Discussions naturally flow from one topic to another. We must recognize that. The "current topic" is not always the topic as stated by the original post in the thread. This is where judgement comes into play. If there are clear segues from one post to another, even while a specific post may look like spam in comparison to the original post, the entire train of discussion in the thread is not spam. Thus, the main job of the moderator should be to take care of abrupt and deliberate topic changes, as well as to judge the overall worthiness of a thread to create "casual discussion." ...

Originally Posted by coRtALoS

I've seen over and over people defending the legitimacy of the "What are you listening to?" threads, and all I've seen so far that's actually held any sort of water for me is "It gives other people good ideas for what to listen to on their own". That's perfectly fine, but why the need to have to post 1 song at a time of what you recommend to other people? Why not 1 post of your favorite songs on your playlist, and the rest of that space used to comment on other people's posts?

Allowing people to just go in there, post what's on their playlist, and not have to read the rest of the thread to be an active participant does not increase the posting quality of our members.

People argue doing so would take away the fun aspect of these forums. How fun would they be if no one bothered to read anything you had to say in a thread and just posted their own meaningless babble in it. Then someone else comes along, reads the last post in the thread, thinks it's a shit thread, and either doesn't post, or posts their own meaningless shit.

Either extreme in this case is obviously too 'extreme', but I think we're leaning a little too easy on this matter.

This gets back to the issue way back when people typed "Quoted for truth" under someone's quote. It adds nothing to the discussion that everyone has already read. It allows no room for any sort of different conversation as it's repeating something that's been said, and it's not resolving any questions, etc that were addressed previously in the thread. Thus it equals spam...

... I have no problem whatsoever if people want to create a playlist thread which at least does present room for discussion, however people posting their playlist more than once is something that needs to be considered for splitting and verbal warning.

Originally Posted by -Azrael666-

...Read the CC description more closely.

Making a whole thread of two word replies doesn't qualify (ie group name - song title).

Originally Posted by Runexten

And Cort, I for one have 2200 songs on my computer right now, do the math with 25 * 2200... That is 55000 characters, posting five times in a row is illegal, no?

Alot of BF members have the same ammount or close to it...

Originally Posted by -Azrael666-

So you're suggesting you would have made 2200 single posts in a row instead? There's a 45 second wait between every post. 2200 * 45 = 99000. That's 1650 minutes. That's 27.5 hours straight dedicated to posting your music. That's 88 pages of just your songs. There's no way you'd have ever posted that many songs singularly, so there's no reason to compare that to how many you can post now. I think the limit is fine, and as far as I know double posting is tolerated when it's due to lack of typing space.