Feature Request: Vote Spam Away Button

Hey Toms staff,

I have a feature request that could save everyone a bit of time and trouble.
Would it be possible to include a 'Spam' button in addition to Thumbs Up/Down, Report and Quote for the Comments?

The way I could see it working best would be similar to a voting system.
Once a comment has been marked as spam, for example, 5 times it would be automatically deleted.

This would both free up the mods so that they can focus more on the forums and give users the feeling that they can actually do something against the onslaught.

To help protect against abuse, perhaps the TOS could be adjusted to include something to the effect of 'misuse of the Spam button will result in a 1 month ban for the first and second offence and permaban for the third' or something similar.

Just my 0,02€ on how to improve the site...
 

randomizer

Champion
Moderator
I like the sound of this, providing that the deleted post is deleted in the same way that it would be manually, ie. it is recoverable if it has been removed wrongly. There is an automated spam catcher in the works but people are generally a lot better at detecting spam than software.
 

jpishgar

Splendid
Overlord Emeritus
I actually very much like this idea, and it would help tremendously towards self-policing. I'll put it forward to the dev team.

As an aside on the topic of spammers, we will be receiving another development pass on the issue of spam and fixing one of the technical loopholes that allow them to post here. I'm very optimistic the war against spammers will be won in the very near future, or at least the tide will turn.