User blog:Danielboone6702/The Lego Message Boards, 2008-2012.

After digging around in the archive and in old topics a while, I've discovered a lot of information about what the MBs were like before, in terms of spam and activity, from 2008 to 2012. I'll summarize each year on the MBs here.

2008
Activity level : Low

Spam percentage : Very low

There was very little spam on the MBs during this time period. On the other hand, it wasn't really that active, either. The MB Forum had less than two pages of non-deleted topics back then. The second page only had a few topics. And also, the topics weren't posted in that often. Take a look here :

http://web.archive.org/web/20080731070458/http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showforum.aspx?ForumID=1021

The MB Forum was not the largest forum at that time, though. The largest forums were the News Forum and the Lego Universe Forum. Those forums were not that active, either :

News Forum : http://web.archive.org/web/20081018141548/http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showforum.aspx?ForumID=1005

LU Forum : http://web.archive.org/web/20081219173000/http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showforum.aspx?ForumID=1440

Also, it was very hard to get a topic approved during those times, and the topics that did get approved were locked after they reached a certain length.

2009
Activity level : Very low

Spam percentage : Very low

The MB Forum was even less active in 2009 than in 2008. See for yourself :

http://web.archive.org/web/20090606033022/http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showforum.aspx?ForumID=1021

The MB Forum was still not a major forum. Lego News, Lego Universe, and other forums were still ahead of it. The other forums became slightly less active since 2008, but the MB Forum seemed to be affected more. But overall, it still seemed to have very little spam.

2010
Activity level : Medium

Spam percentage : Low / Medium

It appears that spam levels have increased in 2010. MKM posted an announcement about which types of posts were spam and which ones were not :

http://web.archive.org/web/20100618145319/http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showpost.aspx?PostID=2755103

Topic are still locked for length, and it's still hard to get a topic up, as you can see in the following links :

http://web.archive.org/web/20100622234508/http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showforum.aspx?ForumID=1021

You can see TTTM4 at the top and TTTM 3 locked at the bottom.

The second page of the MB Forum still isn't full :

http://web.archive.org/web/20100618145310/http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showforum.aspx?ForumID=1021&PageIndex=2

Also, the MB Forum is still not the largest forum. It has now passed the LU Forum, but the News, Games, and Star Wars forums are still larger than it.

Take a look here :

http://web.archive.org/web/20100712104019/http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/default.aspx

Towards the end of 2010, the infamous topics, MB Achievements and Poll Room, were created :

http://web.archive.org/web/20101031062652/http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showforum.aspx?ForumID=1021

They were not so spammy at that time, but they get much worse in 2011...

2011
Activity level : High

Spam percentage : Horrendous

2011 was the spammiest year on the MBs, EVER. There might be a larger total volume of spam today than in 2011, but the MBs were much less active in 2011, so the spam percentage was a lot higher.

Later, Poll Room became extremely spammy. People just made all sorts of polls about every single set in a theme, and answered them, just to get lots of posts. This link should explain it pretty well :

http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showpost.aspx?PostID=3075857&PageIndex&PageIndex=941

Not only that, this topic gained over 50 pages in one day!

http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showpost.aspx?PostID=3075857&PageIndex&PageIndex=1000

In both of the above links, the posts were made on Feb 15th. The Poll Room was eventually locked, with 1,272 pages, and 19,066 posts!!! In 2010, that was more posts than almost all the forums had!!! Only the News Forum had more than 19,000 posts!

The spam didn't stop there. It spread to other topics, like the Time Off MBs Speeches Podium! Look at this :

http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showpost.aspx?PostID=3199074&PageIndex=97

About 50 pages later, MKM asks them to stop :

http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showpost.aspx?PostID=3199074&PageIndex=147

That topic was later locked for a while.

And there was also a lot of spam in the food fight rooms. People said in one post, "I throw pie at you", then in the next post, "I throw cake at you" (for example). The same type of chain-spamming as in the Poll Room. The topic is now deleted, but as you can see in this link, it caused the topic to get locked :

http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/showpost.aspx?PostID=4123673

And there was spamming in all sorts of other topics, like Camp MB. And then MB Achievements got 1,626 pages out of all this. In the end, topics were locked left and right! And because of all this spam, the MB Forum became the largest forum in 2011, with over 150,000 posts :

http://web.archive.org/web/20110713200630/http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/default.aspx

Remember, in 2010, the MB Forum only had about 11,000 posts!

http://web.archive.org/web/20100712104019/http://messageboards.lego.com/en-US/default.aspx

2012
Activity level : Very high

Spam percentage : Medium / High

In early 2012, the new mods were chosen. Afterwards, they started to crack down on spam. They got rid of ranking races, and put a lot of restrictions on Cafes and new HQs.

Also, moderation sped up a ton, slicing average moderation time from a day to less than a few hours! There might still be a lot of spam in some places here and there, but spam management has become much better than in 2011! Last year, MB Achievements, a topic to talk about all your ranks, was the most popular topic on the MBs, by far. Now, it's TTTM, where users discuss issues with the mods. That's a very significant change.

I know things haven't been perfect this year, but it's been a major improvement since 2011. People don't talk as much about ranks anymore, and when there's spam, it's mainly off-topic discussions. But there's still a lot of spam on the LMBs, so if you ever see spam posts, report them to the mods!

What do you guys think?