When I say Spam I do not mean precooked, canned meat (I'm looking at you, Mew), but repetetive posts that clog chat. Spam can come in many different forms, and the way I see it there are 2 kinds of spam: Intentional Spam and accidental Spam. As we go through the sub-divisions of spam, the differences will become clear very quickly. Spam is really just anything that is posted repeatedly, whether the same or not, that clogs or dirupts chat.
S tupid
P ointless
A nnoying
M essages
Troll Spamming
Troll spamming makes up almost all intentional spamming. It is spamming to annoy others, and to clog chat to ruin the chatting experience of other users. It mostly takes the form of complete gibberish but will sometimes form sentences out of 1 word posts, or just being made up of vulgar words or insults altogether. Troll spamming will get you kicked on the spot and, on occasion, banned, should repeated offenses take place. Troll spamming is pretty easy to spot but usually looks something like this.
Rage Spamming
The other side of intentional spamming, rage spamming has the same consequences as troll spamming and is usually someone expressing their dislike for someone via a large rant, usually in caps, or just spamming insults at the person they are in conflict with. Rage spamming is also easily recognizable and looks something like this.
Trade/Battle Request Spamming
Ever needed a pokemon really badly, so you decide to go to chat to see if anyone had that pokemn up for trade? Or wanted to battle so you went to chat to see if anyone wanted to battle you? I know I have. And that's perfectly okay, but it can quickly turn into spam. This species of spam is almost always accidental spam, and for that reason it is not usually ban-worthy without excessive repeat offenses. So basically if you are requesting a trade or a battle, try not to do it every other minute, and if you get warned by an Expert/Editor/Mod/etc. that you are asking for it too much, it's no big deal just back off. Ignoring warnings is how you get kicked, and I think it's safe to say no one likes getting kicked.
Link Spamming
Another form of accidental spam, link spamming is really easy to do without realizing it, and a lot of people don't even think it's spam at all. Say you are browsing a picture site, and you find a page full of really cool pictures, and you decide to share them with the people on chat. That's completely fine, but don't post more than 3 or 4 without consent from an Expert/Editor/Mod. Otherwise, the links start to clog chat and make it more difficult to read. This is essentially the same concept as Trade/Battle request spamming, and I shouldn''t even have to say that overly explicit or inappropriate links will result in a kick. Even if you are posting different pictures each time, when you start to cross the 3/4 line, it starts to become spam.
Fragment Spamming
This is one I see (And do sometimes) on Showdown a lot, and it is probably the easiest kind of spam to do without even realizing it. Basically fragment spamming it posting sentence fragments back-to-back instead of just posting the whole sentence. This is an example of fragment spam (Read it from the bottom up)
>|SentByRavens|
seconds from now
Was pretty chaotic
>|SentByRavens|
seconds from now
Today
>|SentByRavens|
seconds from now
Okay so
Posting single words until it makes a sentence is spam too but that is usually intentional spam. Fragment spam is usually just a few words a post until the thought is completed. I do this a lot without even realizing it so I realize how easy it can be, and it's okay if you do it once or twice, but when it starts to get out of hand, you will be warned, so just make sure you heed the warnings and you'll be fine.
I must also specify as I close that this post is not to target anyone, it is just to define different kinds of spam, and basically warn you not to do them, as I have seen a lot of users on Showdown and the DB alike who have done these and then argued that it wasn't spam. These users had no ill intentions, but honestly thought it wasn't spam. I'm sorry to say that it is, and if you are warned by an Expert/Editor/Mod to stop spamming, you need to heed the warning or else you will probably be kicked. Also, caps should be kept to a minimum in general, and don't really need a designated species of spam. Thanks for reading :)
