Small Community adjustment may have big impact on spam

A minor change to Community posting is currently being tested which may cut down on spam by forcing users to manually select a category before publishing a post.

While on the “all posts” section of a Community, the posting interface now requires you to manually select a category instead of automatically choosing the first one.

This only applies to the “all posts” section however; while looking at a specific category within a Community, that category is set by default when you make a new post.

A small change like this can make a big difference on combating community spam

Even though it is technically only a tiny adjustment, this feature could have significant ramifications as many Communities see posts misplaced or their first category filled with spam. Hopefully this additional step will serve as an obstacle for spammers, who have forced some Community moderators to change their first category to “Spam” simply to filter out irrelevant content.

Clicking the share button displays a warning: "You must select a category in the community to post."

The change is currently being tested on only a small number of Google+ users, but if it is an improvement it is likely Google will be rolling it out to everyone in the near future.

Do you see a lot of misplaced or irrelevant content in your favorite Communities? Do you see this update as a boon to moderators or as an unnecessary step for users? Share your thoughts in the comments below!