It's been driving me nuts. I'm starting to think a lot of them are trolling.

I'm guessing there's a popular but outdated "how to level up" guide somewhere, but I don't know where. Youtube brings up more recent videos, and the older ones don't really go into specifics about the ambassador badge tasks.

Random thought... could the badge page still be outdated in some languages? I remember something like that happening with one of the support articles a long time ago.

I notice people who have the badge already do it. One letter posts etc.
Some people have post histories of what looks like badge spam.

But even as badge spam, it cant be that hard to "fake" a proper reply to a thread. I mean, the threads people chose for it are so random and often very poor choices.

@FFL23 Maybe? I'll check it out when I get a chance.

@budozero Yeah, some are just inexplicable spam but a lot do look like genuine badge posts.

If the users have actual questions about badges (such as leveling up), I don't mind posting a comment to help. I started ignoring the rest, though.

Originally posted by The Great Escape ⚔:

If the users have actual questions about badges (such as leveling up), I don't mind posting a comment to help. I started ignoring the rest, though.

Which means you end up going into ignore mode about 99.97% of the time.

The Steam forums would not be the same without regular insightful posts like " k" "fgjnkdfg" or the classic "lol".
Also always nice, copying the answer of the last guy who wrote something in the thread.
Once had a thread with 7 times the same text from different accounts.

Just 23 hours ago: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/discussions/forum/0/135514402722633847/?ctp=10#c1474221865191773628

Originally posted by Quint the PSY Duck:

Just 23 hours ago: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/discussions/forum/0/135514402722633847/?ctp=10#c1474221865191773628

That was actually their first post and according to their profile they're from the U.S. so they should be able to read the tasks listed for the badge very clearly. Seriously, where are these people getting their information from that you have to post for a badge?

I brought this up to the good Spawn of Totoro the other day. I asked that even though much effort was taken to get the requirement from posting to searching changed, was there any way we could maybe just suggest to get the requirement totally removed about the forums ?

I get the value in attracting people to the community, and also, showing them there is a way to search discussions, which is very valuable unto itself.....(we all know if people used the forum search more, many things could be answered without more threads on the same topic/question).

But still, I totally agree, as it seems to be getting worse again, the spam posting and it being their first post.

Spawn just told me there were outdated guides still around that still state "posting" insteald of "searching", and that at this point, it would not matter much anyway to suggest to have it removed....people would still spam.

I wonder if there is not a better way to attract users to the community forums and teach them there is a search feature, but surely Valve already considered other possibilities.

I don't really mind much the random posts here and there, but when they actually create a thread, that is totally inconsiderate of others needing help or having legitimate discussions, as well as making more work for the moderators in the forums to clean up. Those threads take up needed space where a user could have a thread getting help instead.

Just my two cents, guys. Thanks.

I see nothing wrong with Countries this badge spam comes from. A bit more USA and China then other Countries which is more or less in the line of expectations. I can't read Russian so i don't realy know about the Russian Federation. At least from there no noteworthy nonsence-spam in English, random numbers or emoji's.

I do however see a shift from DOTA/CSGO to Unknown Battlegrounds.
Furthermore, there was 1 day on Steam Client Beta forum as well as on New to Steam forum with accounts posting nonsence with a random list of numbers as a nickname and no avatar uploaded. These were all Unknown Battleground players, UBG being the only game in most cases. Example from today :
http://gtm.steamproxy.vip/discussions/forum/30/1474222595291107645/
Note, the one posting nonsence with an avatar is a suspicious acc to me as well, already reported to Steam as a side effect of posting a simmular comment on the Steam Client Beta forum.

From this i expect Unknown Battlegrounds to become as infested with scam-spam, phishers & some malware and maybe cheaters, as CSGO & DOTA are.

Originally posted by BossGalaga:

It's been years since the badge posting task was removed from the community badge. Seriously, what's up with these people? Okay, that's it. Sorry for the outburst.

Actually I check a lot of them. Many of them already have the community badge including the forum task completed so it's definitely trolling.