NationStates Jolt Archive

This suggestion relates to the practice of "pop-in-pop-out" spamming. For those unfamiliar with the term, that's when a nation jumps from region to region, leaving the same message - usually an advertisement for their home region - on every region's Civil HQ messageboard. The practice seems to be quite popular at the moment, meaning many regions are having their messageboards cluttered out by this rubbish. I haven't spoken to anyone who isn't monumentally irritated by it.

Ad-hoc responses come and go, but there's a limit to how many tinpot regions you can invade and telegram inboxes you can flood before the whole thing becomes just overwhelmingly tedious. It occured to me that there may be an incredibly simple solution - simple for me, because I'm not the one who'd have to fiddle with code to make it happen. I have no idea whether anybody in a code-fiddling-with position will think this is worth anybody's time; I certainly hope they do.

So here's my suggestion: enforce a timespan between joining a region and posting on the Civil HQ. Any nominal number of hours would make "popping" practically impossible, but would not retard any normal regional business. Without knowing a whole lot about the underlying tech, maybe it'd be easiest to tie it to the running of daily updates: changing region sets a flag that disallows posting, until the updates clear it.

I invite and await replies pointing out why this is impossible, why it's unnecessary, why it will ruin the game, why it won't work and why I suck.

I don't think the advertising thing is that terrible... it's just getting nations to want to join their region.
If you put this "timespan" idea into action, I'd bet there would be a lot of other nations complaining about not being able to post.

I invite and await replies pointing out why this is impossible, why it's unnecessary, why it will ruin the game, why it won't work and why I suck.
I always like to give people what they ask for but in this case Im afraid I cant, I like the idea.
The time limit would not need to be anything large, 5-15 minutes would be more than enough to seriously curtail this type of annoyance. Look at what a 15 second restriction did for the telegram system, abusive isiotic tgs went way down, for me at least.
Whatever anyone thinks about regional ads, the fact is theyre against the rules and the mods are overworked anyway so anything that helps self regulate the game is a good thing in my book. Well as long as its not too restrivtive, which a small time delay is not.

I invite and await replies pointing out why this is impossible, why it's unnecessary, why it will ruin the game, why it won't work and why I suck.


It's refreshing to find someone else whose confidence level matches my own :lol:

Actually, it sounds like one of those glaringly obvious "whyever didn't I think of that?" solutions.

So you only suck cos you're hot & wanted an ice-lolly to cool you down :wink:

At first I thought the idea was terrible, as I can think of times when I've popped in and out of a region just to say something... but thinking about it... it would solve more problems than just recruitment spam.

Like that Prodigal F-whatever guy last night, going through as many regions as he could, leaving his long, annoying, whining post everywhere. It would drastically cut back on spam.

There are also legitimate reasons for wanting to pop in and out of a region... like wanting to annoy/flame a founder or delegate on their HQ without letting them ban you. And stopping this would definitely not be such a bad thing.

I hope someone *cough Sal cough* seriously considers this idea. Even ten or twenty minutes would cut back on the spam!!

Hmm, I will think about this, I'm not sure exactly, I'd need to tweak it a bit.

At least you didn't say "no way" :D good deal

There are also legitimate reasons for wanting to pop in and out of a region... like wanting to annoy/flame a founder or delegate on their HQ without letting them ban you. And stopping this would definitely not be such a bad thing.

I was waiting for somebody to come forward to identify and defend some legitimate uses of the pop-in-pop-out. I had considered the kind of thing you've noted here - popping in & out to make a public point to a region. It seems to me - and it seems you agree - that if speed and stealth are essential, then it's almost certainly a mission of mischief. Legitimate communications can either survive a short talk-ban, or be routed through the founder/delegate/whoever via telegram. In short, I believe there's nothing worthwhile that would be inconvenienced. (Sorry, this is just a bit of a me-too.)

Mad propz to Salusa for taking my suggestion on board.

Yes, I do like this idea, as I'm being spammed today with an anti-recruitment ad for my tactics of TGing each nation for recruitment purposes as opposed to popping in and out of a region, which I do not believe in effective whatsoever.

Good job!

I have been suggesting something like this for so long it isnt even funny, I personally think it should apply to recuriters in the pacifics as well.

Imagine: a player checks in maybe once a day or less. He or she may join a region and say "Hi, I'm new here". Then logs out, and checks back again the next day. Hampering this simple level of play may not look like much of a problem to the more fervent players here, but I think it will be an annoying problem for those more 'loose' players. A game should IMHO cater to the causal players first, and be welcoming to them.

Also, one may want to jump into a region to inform the players there of something urgently. Like "Alert all natives! You're being invaded by the Glorious Invader Ducks of Doom!", or something like that ;). There's time-sensitive information exchange, and this limitation would hamper that.


So, what is the object in the above suggestion for the more active players: the benefit?

I'm not so sure it'll really reduce the amount of recruitment spam, as I see it often done as a planned activity by a region where players are under the mistaken impression doing so is legal. A threshold will in this case then merely make the same activity take longer, but won't stop or reduce it.

Then do people think they can eject the recruiter before the message is posted? That's a bit presumptious, as it will require being on-line at the time, plus positive identification of the nation's intent to post a recruitment message. It might work like that in only a few regions and a few cases, but most often it'll just be too late if the time limit is in the minutes range.

Ballotonia