https://www.skool.com/yard/spam-scams-wall-of-shame?p=cb7214a3

on my mind today. Sleep and going on walks are big for me. Any good books on this topic?

As most of you know I recently launched a new Skool community and we just hit 42 members! 🎉 It’s early, small, and already showing signs of thoughtful, productive engagement. I originally invited people from outside Skool, and I’ve noticed that off-platform joins tend to be quieter once they’re inside. 🤔 For those of you who run communities and have experience with this, I’d love your perspective: - What’s worked for bringing people in from other platforms and keeping them engaged? - Any onboarding moves or early decisions you’d do again (or avoid)? Appreciate any lessons learned. I’m very much in build-and-learn mode. 🙏

I just finished a chat with Andrew Kirby about our situation and what they saw on their side. My biggest misunderstanding was thinking Skoolers and “Skool the platform” were the same thing. They’re not. Skoolers is a community like ours. It’s run with its own standards, and they moderate it the way they want their community to feel. The border is pretty simple in practice.Inside a community is inside the border.Anything that spills into other communities is outside the border. That’s why the Purge became a real problem. In my group, people were using my face as their profile picture for jokes. When that spilled into Skoolers, it starts normalizing fake accounts and “who cares” profile identity. That snowballs fast, and it makes the whole platform feel less legit. Andrew also clarified what they mean by low-quality engagement. It’s loosely defined, but the patterns are clear: - lots of posts with no real conversation - post and ghost - self-promotional posts - anything that looks like gaming the system to level up faster He told me the phrase “help me level up” gets flagged by the system. He also said most people cooperate and do fine. It’s usually a tiny handful of problem makers. His words were basically: out of huge numbers of users, they can count the real troublemakers on one hand. One more thing people should understand: Skoolers moderation is a community choice. They’re not “moderating the platform.” They’re protecting their room. Also, they have 5 moderators. They’re part-time. If we waste their time with annoying stuff, we are effectively burning the bandwidth of a small team. So here’s what I’m asking from the Yard going forward: - Use a real profile photo. Treat your account like it represents you. - If you post, stick around and reply. Try to create conversation, not noise. - Do not post anything framed around farming points, leveling up, or “help me level up.” - Respect moderators and admins. They are protecting the experience for everyone.

Spam has been hitting Skool more lately, and sometimes it hits the Yard too. If you spot it early, it helps me keep this place clean. If you see a spam post or comment: - Click the three dots on it - Tap “Report to admins” - Skip replying to it, replies often feed it If you get a DM that feels like a pitch or scam: - Screenshot it - DM it to an admin inside the Yard - I can remove the account and clean up the thread A few rules so real builders can still share things: - If you built something genuinely useful for Skool or community building, share it once with context and a clear takeaway - Links are fine. Asking strangers to DM you is not - Mass DMing members to sell something is not welcome - Cold pitches, copy paste replies, and “free job/money” stuff tends to get removed fast For obvious spam, I usually remove and ban on the first offense. If it looks like a real human who is just confused, I may message them once before removing. If you want to help, drop a comment below with: - Their profile link - The exact text they posted or DM’d you Keep it factual. No dogpiling. Thanks for protecting the Yard ⭐ Jack