Is a spam an appreciated participation in the forums ?

Just keep going on, with the same message of appreciation from so called "App Store Connect Engineer" which is probably App Store Connect Bot.

IMHO, I fear this practice of bot answer is a very bad evolution for the forum, which value has long been developers speaking to developers, not to bots.

Is it an automatic answer (I cannot believe anyone who read the post did not notice it was a spam)

This is an interesting question, isn't it?

I had assumed that these "useless" Apple posts must be bots. Sometimes I downvote them, but the downvotes disappear after a while.

Then there was this thread:

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/771153

The Apple account posted a useless answer. I downvoted it, but then the downvote disappeared. So I wrote an explicit answer pointing out that the reply was useless, for the benefit of the OP who had asked a genuine question and got nothing in reply except some bot-spam, and downvoted it again.

THEN, the amazing thing is that the Apple account posted a reply acknowledging that their post had not answered the question!!! (And didn't remove the downvote, thought it remains "recommended"). So now I don't know what to think. Either, the useless answer was sent by an actual Apple human who didn't read the question, or it was written by a bot that is sentient enough to acknowledge its mistake!

IMHO, I fear this practice of bot answer is a very bad evolution for the forum, which value has long been developers speaking to developers, not to bots.

I agree. In particular I would appreciate it if bot-posts could be marked as such, and if downvotes (or indeed upvotes!) could go back into the algorithm as training data.

So now I don't know what to think. Either, the useless answer was sent by an actual Apple human who didn't read the question, or it was written by a bot that is sentient enough to acknowledge its mistake!

Before they all got laid off, the Community Specialists on the Apple Support Community used to be accused of being bots. I think these first-tier support engineers are only allowed to post canned replies. Maybe they don't even have moderation rights, which is why they reply instead of just delete.

I think the more interesting aspect of that other thread is knowing the exact number of words that someone will read from this kind of forum posting. I guess the magic number is 60. You have to state your key points in the first 60 words to avoid being misunderstood or ignored.

That's good to know. I always get annoyed when I reply asking 3 specific, important questions and the OP only ever answers one.

But it's definitely not a bot. I haven't seen anyone posting bot replies here at all. They do that in the Apple Support Community often enough. You can always tell they are bot reply due to the numbered list.

I think the only non-Apple people posting replies in this forum are in this thread!

I think the only non-Apple people posting replies in this forum are in this thread!

Unfortunately, and in less than 60 words, I feel the same.

Merry Christmas to all.