I'm seeing a lot of people spamming reviews on new songs for others to scout them lately, and I'm here to tell you now, don't do it, tell all your friends not to do it, tell your friends' friends not to do it, share this post... You know where I'm going with this. This isn't generally a problem, so newer users are especially vulnerable to be taken for a ride.
Why not just check these guys out and scout? It might seem innocent at first, but scouting isn't a one way street. If you scout someone and they later break the rules, you're also held accountable, and even though the song you're being asked to scout them on could be legitimate, you also have to consider that they're asking you to scout them in an illegitimate way. The review box is for reviews, not solicitations.
Not only are these reviews useless to you, but usually these people are stealing music for use in Geometry Dash (or just plain personal gratification) and trying to use you to get away with it. Prime example, today, this guy steals this song from Stephen Universe and uses reviews to dupe YOU into jeopardizing your privileges in the audio portal for 5 minutes of fame. What does this mean for you? You could lose not only your ability to scout other artists but be unscouted yourself and/or receive a permanent ban from submitting to the AP. No bueno.
What should you do instead? Well, first, those of you worried about your whistle, I'd check if they're copying and pasting these reviews elsewhere. If so, they fall under the "don't leave tons of junk reviews for points" rule, and you can flag them "abusive".
You can flag them "useless" if this doesn't seem to be the case, or you just don't want to risk losing your hard earned whistle. Asking people to scout you in a review isn't explicitly against the rules, but a lot of mods will remove these reviews anyway, just because they're, well, useless.
Secondly, I would check to see if the submission they're asking to have scouted is STOLEN. Search for the title, do an audio analysis search, w/e. If you see a guy that joined very recently, and his audio seems top quality, yet he's claiming something is his first song or something like that, this is suspicious and should be handled with care. Pay close attention to the description as well, especially if it seems incoherent, erratic, or is pressing for people to scout. If it mentions Geometry Dash at all, or its creator, RobTop, this is a huge red flag for me as well. Very seldom are these submissions legitimate.
If you find stolen audio report it here to the Audio Portal Cleanup thread and flag it. Proof could be something as simple as finding the material on YouTube or SoundCloud from a different author on an earlier date, or just knowing the material was from a well-known producer like Skrillex. Don't write a review saying the track is stolen. This is against the rules.
If you find abusive reviews or need a second opinion before flagging reviews, @Psychopath, who runs the Whistle Cow Crew, is generally regarded as an expert in this area. You could contact him or a mod if you find you really just don't know what to do here. Never respond to an abusive review with another review.
I will say that since the Abusive Review thread was locked for, well, abuse of the flagging system, information on abusive reviews is usually shared by PM or newspost. Now, just because there's no threads to lock or forum users to be banned in this equation, you should never flag a review just because someone else thinks you should flag it, only if you see rule breaking. This is a good way to lose whistle points. When in doubt, flag "useless" or don't flag at all. Asking for future reference is a big help, too.
TLDR, when you see these guys soliciting scouts in reviews:
- Don't scout
- Check join date
- Check for spam/abusive reviews
- Flag rule breaking reviews
- Check out the song(s) in question
- Check the title and description
- Find originals (if stolen)
- Report to AP Cleanup
- Tell your friends
Bottom line, don't give these guys what they want. They don't care about the songs they're leaving junk reviews on, our community, or what damage they do to your account if they manage to dupe you into scouting them and they later get caught stealing audio (which they certainly will).
Be careful who you scout, and if you see someone breaking rules, it's up to you whether to confront them about it or not. If you do write them a PM, bear in mind you're probably in line for a lot of entitled noise about how NG rules are stupid and we should be able to post whatever we want, or our rules are unfair somehow. Keep it classy. Honestly, I'd just shoot a mail to the people getting these junk reviews, link them my post or whatever. People need to know when they're being taken advantage of.
~EDM364
BlueAlpha14
People actually ask to be scouted on reviews? Reviews are lousy enough as it is (I see people give submissions 3 stars but then don't explain why on a review), we don't need spam included in that.
ADR3-N
Yeah, it's getting more and more common lately. I just caught that guy today checking new audio. Keep on the lookout!