A mod and an admin responded already, could you sig spammers stop posting worthless replies please? You guys are ruining the forum.
-snip-
Perhaps the rationale is some sort of idea of "freedom of speech" but if freedom of speech means that you have 1000's of people "shouting nonsense" then I don't really see the benefit (as I would prefer a quiet bar to a noisy nightclub but perhaps that is just me).
A good part of allowing (paid) signatures likely does have to do with freedom of speech. Just like in the real world, if someone is saying a bunch of nonsense then they will look like an idiot. Here if they say enough nonsense (that actually breaks the rules) then they will eventually get banned.
In reference to you preferring a quiet bar over a noisy nightclub, I would say that you are entitled to your preferences however just because you prefer one kind of bar over another does not mean that a nightclub will turn off it's music just because you would rather enjoy drinks in a quiet bar.
Just because people are saying things, it does not mean that you have to listen. You are more then welcome to use the ignore button.
And the excuse that "it's too hard to moderate" is just plain crap - I had reported every useless post with a sig for a month and it resulted in my reporting accuracy being brought done to a low % (despite my reports only being for pointless posts such as +1 which I thought was supposed to be banned anyway).
I don't think useless signature spam is too difficult to moderate. If you reported "+1" posts then the appropriate action would have been to delete the post and mark it as a "good" report (assuming the post did not have
any additional content, if it had additional content then it may or may not have been against the rules. It would likely have not been against the rules if it said why he is "+1'ing" the post
Thinking about that - when exactly did the mods decide that +1 posts are now okay (they are appearing everywhere now yet I do recall they were *banned* more than a year ago)?
I don't think they are okay, if all they say is +1 then they should be deleted.
(mostly they appear to come from accounts with ad sigs and they are generally not being deleted - perhaps people are not reporting them now because of their accuracy % being reduced as happened to me)
I don't think most mods are going to go around patrolling the forum, looking for spam posts (including "+1" posts), they will rely on people reporting posts that are against the rules. The fact that someone is using a paid signature will generally not affect if a specific post is against the rules when you are reporting only a single post. Additionally if a post has enough information in it that you can say that you do not agree with what they are saying then it most likely does not break the rules
