Well, if they'd bring back the IM...

This^

Beuli has contributed a considerable amount to the amount of spam we've been getting.

Couldn't agree more. I would like to read the opinion of the mods, or admins.

I think like all things in life these things happen in cycles, as people come and go.

I still think there's enough interesting discussion on this site. Its why i come here.

Anyway I haven't been round all that long so I suppose I can't really comment properly.

Was there some sort of VGC golden age? Or does everybody have rose tinted glasses with regards to these sorts of things?

Or have all the good users been promoted to writers, mods or admins?

Why is dsister perma-banned?

I believe this is precisely two example posts of what the OP was referring to. The first one is a wannabe-funny comment, the other one is a completely unnecessary answer only stating it was a good joke. Even in most serious of thread, within the first ten or so posts there's at least one post that completely ignores the topic and whose only purpose is to bring in a joke or a stupid picture that's funny but completely unrelated.

We have always had spam, dtewi, and in similar amounts to what we have now. You know this as well as I.

All that has changed is the amount of constructive and intelligent discussion, and is that really so unexpected? This hopefully-soon-to-be-scrapped half-broken version of gamrConnect doesn't help the fact that a whole bunch of games have been delayed and sales for the generation are prettymuch set in stone.

The issue I have mostly here with recent posts is the rise of people mislabeling their posts and meaning exactly the opposite to cut through the clutter.  Saying Kinect is doing awesome, when you mean bombing, slamming GT5 with sales predictions, when you mean do well, and others like this, including the thread that trumpeted how AWESOME is, and wanting it to continue forever, is a problem.

I count this along the lines of spam, because both violate a basic principle of expectations when on the Internet, in that, when you go somewhere to find something, the subject matter matches what you expect.  One can consider that arguably the greatest sin on the Internet is mislabeled content.

This wouldn't make any difference... the older site had it, a chosen few used it, and spam was still rampant. The only real difference now is... less decent discussions in general. That makes spam more apparent.

A fine call, though it probably won't be answered, sadly.

...then don't leave and post more in the forums threads and not just in the Mafia threads... Many great users left since 2008 and we ain't gonna 1 2 3 replace them with new great users.. hopefully they are gonna post like older great users post before them like we did before them..  set the example dtewi!