Updated Comment - You may not realize...

Softer Tone

I recently posted asking for ways to soften my tone and I received some great feedback. It's clear I need to find or write better posts outlining ways for new users to engage with the community and make this a larger part of my messenging. Today, I'm not there yet so this is my first draft to move in that direction.

The Revision

I was quite excited to release a way for authors to remove my comments from their posts and I wanted to include this in my replies. This revision is to start softening my tone and better highlight my whitelist and this new ability to remove my comments.

Here's what the new reply looks like:

I'm starting off with, "You may not realize..." as I think that is quite often the case. And hopefully this does soften the tone to minimize any defensiveness, which I've seen plenty of. I've condensed the stats I point out and then offer links to help understand why these comments are spam and how to better engage with the community and earn their support. And then I directly name the parent author to let them know they can remove this comment.

I wanna go further, but this starts to move in the right direction for the time being. Definitely share your thoughts regarding further revisions I could make and other areas to highlight.

And I'm still looking for suggestions of good groups to possibly coordinate with to send these new users to for learning about the platform. There's a lot of points to consider there because I don't want to just push a flood of spammers toward legitimate content curators with limited time. I haven't found the best approach yet so please share your thoughts on ways to help new users.

@spmmingcomment - How Ironic

The comment I showed above was my first reply using the new revised text. I had to literally LOL a little when I saw the name of this account is @spmmingcomment, and if you look at its comments this is exactly what I target which is why I have replied to this account 48 times. And counting.

As far as I can tell, this account exists solely to give me work to do. And not to worry, I'm ready!

I've pulled together all of the pending payouts above the dust threshold for this account. I haven't removed those votes from the parent author because in this case I think there is no defensible position to upvote this account, other than the mistaken presumption that the complimentary remarks were genuine.

Hopefully we can remove all incentive for this account to even exist. I'll be carefully watching everything it posts going forward.