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Spam is in fact intended for the mass recipient, how ever undesirable. This stuff is not.
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If we want to whip out the dictionary:

> unsolicited usually commercial messages (such as emails, text messages, or Internet postings) sent to a large number of recipients or posted in a large number of places

“Usually commercial”

“Or posted in a large number of places”

I think we can stretch this definition to describe what’s happening here. What’s the point in arguing this


The point is that by trivializing it as “spam” and pattern matching against a human activity we lose the opportunity for a meaningful investigation of and interaction with what is going on.

Traditional forum/wiki spam is intended for search engine crawlers, not humans. How this new stuff relates to human users of the resource does not seem to differ in any way that is significant.



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