Calling Out The Welcome Trolls, The Cut and Pasters, and AI Posters

[Jonathan Greene]

Do you know who the welcome trolls are? Go into the new member introductions forum and watch for the same few people who say the same basic message every time someone new comes on the site. Don't get me wrong, providing a warm welcome is great, but these welcome trolls are just cutting and pasting the same thing to every new person, so their post activity looks sturdy. However, seeing their post-to-upvote ratio is abysmal because all they do is say welcome and add no value at all. But they aren't the only spammers currently infiltrating the forums.

There are also the cut and pasters and the AI posters. Both are obvious because no one takes that long to structure a post with headings and subheadings for one person; we all know it's cut and paste. Again, don't get me wrong, cutting and pasting obvious info may help someone, but I think it just jams up the forums. For those of us in the forums all the time, we see it repeatedly. And then the AI.

Listen, no one talks like AI. It's not conversational. It's the most obvious read out there when you see it. If all you are doing is asking AI how to respond to someone, you are not adding any value. You are just looking to get more posts up. What is the point of that? Did you also try to become the Mayor on Yelp of the local coffee shop when you were younger? Likely.

If you don't have the time to respond in your voice, based on your own experience, you probably shouldn't spend time in the forums just to say welcome only, cut and paste, or use AI.

I await the first "Who made you the forum police?" response.