I'm curious about these Asian (Chinese?) threads that keep popping up all the time. What do we know about them ? Are they the same people who keep creating new accounts, are they advertising, do they do this on other forums?
You can always report any spam you see, to potentially speed up its demise.
Not directly, but there are other reasons for it. For example, posting links in various forums will increase the findability on Google. Furthermore, some people actually get paid to post spam, though to what ends is not always entirely clear.
Yeah, it's been an ongoing issue, for prior discussion see - https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/any-update-on-the-korean-spam-situation.8070980/. We're still dealing with it, though it's not as bad now as it was back when the thread above was active. If you see spam, report it. It helps us.
Also they are posting on an English forum where nobody can even read what they're saying lol
Now that's a dangerous assumption to make, for at least two reasons:
1) Chinese and Korean, just like English, German or pretty much any other language are spoken as non-native languages.
2) English being the international language it is, it's very likely that Chinese and Korean users read this forum.
And there are translation tools available online as well.
The main reason it's usually posted on foreign language boards is because it stays up longer (or used to be before instant translation services became a thing)... it's not about actually advertising it there it's about getting it to stick around long enough that it can get indexed by a search engine for link tracking so that it gets a higher listing in searches both for whatever it's selling, and for relation to the main focus of wherever they posted it. The idea is to abuse the "word of mouth" function of search algorithms.
By the way, can a moderator see the reason for which I reported someone? Because I often phrase the reason in silly ways such as "Smite the wicked spammer!" or "Wretched spammer" and I like to think they get a chuckle out of it.
There are actually agencies in many struggling countries in which it's people's job to post spam. Mostly in places where there aren't many options to make a living. Don't get me wrong, it's absolutely annoying and we will burn it all away when we find it, but I also feel sorry for the people that more or less have to do it just to get by. (Then, of course, there are those shady businesses just self-promoting as obnoxiously as possible. Those we will strike down with great prejudice! [Insert Space Marine roar.])
They tend to post around the same times every day (early morning/late night EST). When a mod sees it we'll nuke it. It used to be much worse before the 10 posts rule existed. Because they could pop up ANYwhere on the forums. Spring of 2017 was muuuuuuuuuuuuuch worse than current. Though it is worse now than it was 6 months ago. We continue to search for and find other ways to deal with it. But if it gets through so you can see it. Report it ASAP.
