I’m not quite sure what is going on - previously first posts required a human review to avoid these machine-driven spams. Now it doesn’t look like those are needed any longer and there is so much garbage from that that makes me wonder what is going on… I hope Epic is not giving up on this forum.
It was fine for a week and now it’s all back 
isnt this question technically spam? it doesnt ask a question.
but yea we are all sick of the bots. they come in waves it seems like. as for Epic well who knows what they are thinking on these things.
No, I’m raising an issue for discussion to try to make the community better for everyone, while you are adding nothing useful to the discussion and trying to make me feel bad for posting the question in the first place. If this is off-topic, perhaps, albeit I clearly marked the question “everything else”. If you are having trouble discerning spam from off-topic, do some research on the terminology first.
It is quite obvious that Epic doesn’t like these spams any more than any of us do. I’m raising the issue because these links could me malicious and one could accidentally click on them. A forum full of spam will push legitimate users aside to other places. Previously there was a policy of having the first post of a new account moderated, and that was changed for some reason. The point I’m trying to make, evidently badly given response above, is that Epic should reconsider and bring that policy back. It might cost a little but would surely protect the forum and the community.
I actually do not understand how it works. Low karma users need to wait for moderation but the bots spam freely? What’s the catch? Could any mod chip in on this?
@Al Ananias: your reasons are valid; what I’d agree with Thompson on, is that this is probably not a good place for a discussion. Do consider starting a thread in the [forums][1] - somehow I feel it’s more likely to be noticed there.
I usually hang out around the Unanswered Questions section and, quite frankly, half the page is spam:
technically speaking, this is not a forum its a answerhub which is meant for questions. there is a separate area which is the forum for discussions. As for my post not adding to the discussion, well it elicited a response from you didnt it. also it showed that i agree with there are too many bots, my observation on how they appear in waves, and the fact that there is never a clear indication of epics view on the issue.
now for your other points. links being malicious is a bit obvious isnt it, any link you click could be malicious and that is why you need to be careful with anything you do. even if you are careful you also need protection from viruses, bots, etc and also backups of data. id like to believe most people here are able to tell that a post doesnt look right and wont click the links. you also mentioned accidentally clicking the links, its very difficult to accomplish this. to click a link actually requires you to click once to open the post then again to open the link. if you dont realize something doesnt look right by the second click then thats on you. really who clicks a link without reading the content around it. do you think people just click random places on the page while reading it. maybe if someone has tremors or another medical condition they may accidentally click something but that seems to me to be a exceptional case.
your last point talks about policies at epic lets take a look at that. first im guessing you dont work at epic since if you did you would have the answers. given that how can you know for sure what the policies were. i know i know this is nitpicky but its accurate epic doesnt disclose its policies from what ive seen. i also realize you were basing this view on past observations. from my observations the vetting was only on the forum and not on the answerhub. if there was a policy before and its been changed wouldnt there be a reason for that. it probably cost a ton to have someone to filter all the posts.
i believe a good short term solution would be to use a automated process that filters out certain criteria from being posted such as links in the subject or posts that are just links. of course this will only work for a short time before the bots adapt. i have personally mentioned the issues about spam to a staff member and they said they were working on it. i dont doubt they are working on it but eliminating something like spambots and a next to impossible task.
i dont know the education background of the people here but mine is in computer science / networking and business. if you know about how bots and viruses and such work and you realize how the general populus operates a computer you will realize how difficult the problem is. all sides of the issue need to looked at, which customers are effected, how are they effected, whats the cost to fix the issue. then run the equations to see if its worth doing the fix, if there even is a fix.
I believe that some of the features are locked behind a karma gate. First time posters used to need to wait before having their post appear, it was somewhat sluggish over the weekend. I’ve always attributed this to moderation / approval.