Hello,
is re-posting of the same but reformulated statement without adressing answers considered spam in terms of the forum rules? I sadly was unable to tell from reading the rules themselfs. A clarification would be very welcome and maybe help more users than just me, especially regarding the use of the flagging tool. Thank you in advance! 
What, like this?
This thread comes up on almost a weekly basis. In fact, Iâd be surprised if there wasnât a nerf cloaking thread in the first 2 pages on this forum section. Almost every single one of them goes like this:
- OP posts a post with a new (lol) idea that always boils down to some variation of the following:
- âThereâs a big meanie who is sitting in my system and not doing anything, but I donât know where he is and I canât ever just go next door. I canât find said meanie and even though I know that heâs probably at work and poses no threat at all, I wont do anything in my system that I absolutely canât leave ever because he might not be at work and I might lose a ship. CCP please stop the meanie from being able to do nothing to me because heâs probably at workâ
Thread gets trolled because its been done literally to death. This horse has been beaten so hard and so often that itâs little more than a memory of a memory of a red smear on the grass, and yet it STILL WONT DIE! In fact itâs been done so many times that this particular horse is now undead; even if it does die, it will still be remembered and parodied.
Someone comes along and suggests that AFK cloakers canât hurt you, because they are, by their very definition, AFK. No one ever lost a ship to someone who ISNâT PLAYING THE GAME.
Someone else comes along and points out that while the cloaker might be AFK, he might not be, and so we have Schrodingerâs Hot Dropper. The cyno pilot who might be AFK⌠but he might not be as well, and you will only know for sure when he decloaks, points and lights his candle. (Yes, I know this isnât how the cat works)
Someone else comes along and suggests that you use bait and setup a TARP. Or have a defence fleet on standby. Heaven forbid you have to actually fight to defend your space.
A further person comes along and suggests that the problem isnât cloaking AFK in your system that you canât possibly leave ever, but that you KNOW that the person is AFK in your system⌠and perhaps local should be removed because free 100% accurate intel is probably not the best thing in the game and if you didnât know that the big meanie was in your system, you wouldnât be worried about leaving the undock/POS.
Then another person pokes their head in and complains that local is 100% NEEDED because D-Scan and probing are such bad mechanics, and IF YOU TAKE MY LOCAL AWAY IM QUITTING FOREVER AND NO YOU CANâT HAVE MY STUFF!
Someone asks if they can have 7âs stuff.
We end up with another thread which goes on for pages and pages between complains about local, defence fleets, inability to just go next door, people who arenât playing the game but are playing the meta, lots of bickering and in the end nothing gets solved. CCP wont remove cloaking because it would mess with waaay too many things and it creates content (which is a good thing) by removing content (which is a bad thing) but they canât really think of any way to do it without a complete overhaul of the local and scanning systems.
Now that Iâve had this entire threadâs conversation, can we just let it die? Please?
I had postings within a thread in mind, where a statement is repeated without interacting with replies to it.
For entire threads, i guess it would just be a dublicate thread and treated the usual way. (?)
Unless it adds something new, Iâd probably call it spam. Itâs effectively empty quoting yourself. Whether or not that gets any kind of enforcement is questionable even at the best of times.
Ralphâs example above is a good example showing that once a post gets long enough nobody is gonna look into it and derive a conclusion.
AndâŚSometimes I feel like CCP would breach this if this is a rule.
The Ralph quote is a counter-example. Itâs something that gets copy/pasted to every dead horse duplicate thread that pops up every week or so on the same topic. What OP is referring to is a specific thread that got closed because every time anyone replied to it, a same guy popped back in and re-worded his own position without adding anything. The thread was closed because he was trolling as well and that guy is already a known thread-killer.
With all respect, it is the opinion of CCP which actually defines if such thing will be considered spam and the point of this thread is getting an official clarification from them or a response from someone else that points out to me where i missed the obvious in the existing rules. I think there is some unclarity on what may be flagged as spam and a clarification might result in less issues around that.
Rules are often intentionally vague. I wouldnât expect any clarification. I expect any CCP response will be along the lines of âit depends.â Rules questions where you need a CCP response are usually done in support tickets. They probably wonât respond at all to this thread, but if they do itâll probably be to say to file a support ticket.
A support ticket would not offer others who share the same uncertainty an insight, but iâll use that route if your expectation should become reality.
Ah right, I get it now.
salvos and/or dom I take it?
I assume thatâs what heâs referring to based on where the dev/isd activity has been the past few days, yeah. I avoid those threads the best I can anyway.
Looks like majority of people havenât trained Ignore Trolls skill.
You mean like a stuck record player? Iâd certainly consider it spam after 3 times. On rare occasions may it become necessary to repeat a statement twice or perhaps three times for someone else to get it, but forums donât work exactly like a real conversations. A few things do get lost. You cannot look people into their eyes and written words carry little compared to an authoritative voice for exampleâŚ
If you cannot get a message across then itâs often because the other side isnât listening, or worse, is unable to listen. What sometimes works is to become the listener yourself. Listen calmly and respectfully until they follow you behind the barn, then shoot them with the truth.
Also keep a watch on the time of day. The later in the day it gets the more tired people become and the less theyâre able to listen. Many arguments Iâve seen (not just on forums) happen because of tiredness.
Ok on that then.
Op, what youâre sorta missing here is that thereâs no one thread for a lot of these things.
Theyâre ongoing themes that can run for years, resurfacing week after week, month after month.
Different op , slightly different first 20ish posts but always basically the same.
take war for instance,
War became problematic a little over two years ago and for whole of that time you can be assured that theyâre has been a war thread on the front page of gd .
The discussion has been had many many times over and a lot of the discussion just goes in circles , to the point where canned responses are basically being reworded repeatedly without actually going anywhere,
And yet wars still befuckered so new threads pop up and require answering , and those answers need rebuttals (because itâs the internet so of course they do).
Iâm pretty sure the isd leaves them open to serve as a âlighting rodâ for the lads set on having a go at each other.
Ganking is another one,
As was off grid boosters (ask a corpmate to fill you in)
As is the venerable afk cloaky camping whinge to which my initial post is the canned response to.
To give you an idea of the sort of scale click here to see where I found it and note the date.
Heh ⌠Ezwal.
Never forgotten.
Actually, one of the ISDâs said that some of the âspamâ rules were relaxed a bit in an attempt to keep discussions on the same thread.
Iâd link it, but on a phone, but I do remember it was in response to a SalvoDom exchange in a thread. That should narrow the possibilities somewhat 
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If someone or a group are trying to bury your content/post behind gish/irrelevancy, it can become necessary to repeat oneself to keep the thread ontopic, and ones own content relevant to that from being buried by trolls.
Its unclear what the criteria are for a post being hidden by flagging. Recent ISD testimony seems to indicate there is somekind of âtrust ratingâ associated with individual flaggers, especially if they spam false ones repeatedly.
Some people genuinely just want to distract/censure/offtopic/troll threads on points that occur which are against their interest in-game, or from someone they âdont likeâ. Not only will they go to great lengths to do so, but also involve alts.
The thread you are referring was cleaned several times, then first temp locked, and then closed due to certain people spamming false flag reports, by their own admission. That was the reason given in first the ISD temp lock, and then locked by CCP staff for further spamming of false flags.
The irony, is that the false flag spammers/trolls âwonâ, because they got the thread first temp locked, and then closed, which was their goal all along, as the thread was going places counter to their own interests and by people they âdont likeâ.
The same behavior/problems will no doubt re-occur from the same individuals (and alts) once the official feed-back threads are introduced closer to launch, until which we are not allowed to start threads related to that topic.
Yeah but whatâll happen is eventually the isd will either start reprimanding people for flagging legitimate arguments or falcons going to kill the button entirely
[insert something about nice things here]
In this case, the false flag spamming was admitted by two posters.
The flag system works nominally, most of the time, as best it can, if not abused.
Ive seen unwarranted âhidesâ caused by persons deliberately flagging it without cause, but also posts that genuinely were innappropriate/spam/off-topic as well.
I assume you are referring to me.
I was not trolling, nor spamming false flags.
None of my posts got removed, nor hidden as a result of false flags.
I also dont kill threads, infact I produce more content in threads here than most of you combined, many times over.
What kills the threads I participate in, is trolls repeatedly trying to pound their head against me, and ultimately making it a mess of crap no-one wants to read, by their own action.
They are quite happy with that, as it wrecks/derails the thread, which is their purpose.
Iâm here to promote/facilitate discussion with hard questions, not to kill threads.
If you think that makes me a troll, then I am the best troll this board has ever seen.