Just recently, a thread of mine was locked and called spam. I had no clue that it could be interpreted as spam. The Spirit of Time and I got into a heated argument about it and now I want to know what's spam and what's not, down to the last detail, so I can avoid making the same mistake again.

Spirit said that if I spam the debate thread again, I'll get an infraction, and I don't want one because of some thread which I was certain wasn't spam. Problem is that I don't know what's spam and what's not.

If someone could fill me in on all the details, I'd appreciate it.

What thread was it?

The real meaning of spam is supposed to be Stupid Pointless Annoying Messages..

I believe you're talking about the thread in the debate board about your dreams. My opinion is that it should not have been locked, and is not. However, it's not really a debate, so it shouldn't have been in that board. Spirit could have simply moved it to General Chat, which would be much better in my opinion. Why he didn't is totally beyond me, you clearly put a lot of effort in to that thread. If I were a full moderator I would unlock and move it. Unfortunately, however, I can't. *Hint hint*

SPAM boils down to anything posted somewhere it shouldn't be. A post irrelevant to a thread is spam, and a thread irrelevant to a forum is spam. There is a spam forum, /b/uizel, where things aren't actually spam because they belong there.

For your particular instance, what you posted wasn't a debate, but just a general "yes/no/maybe". A debate is something controversial, something where you argue, where you are tempted to call the other person an idiot (or usually worse). Where you disagree or agree at your heart. Meanwhile, the "Nintendo" forum would have threads that are about Nintendo, nothing more and nothing less, and so on.

I have a question: To what point are we allowed to curse on the forums? Can we just censor it, or do we have to avoid it entirely?

I don't think that thread should be in the /b/uizel board. It really should be in general chat, if anywhere. It's not spam enough to be /b/uizel-worthy, as it actually has some depth and is conversation-worthy. If it was something like "LOL EYE HAD A DREEM", then it should be in /b/uizel. But it's not. Case closed.

All my posts

Alright, I just cleaned up 7 posts from a rather short topic in General. The topic asks about names, yet half the posts were discussing fake names. As that is considered off-topic, that would be an okay example of spam (not the best, though).

Spam: Opening a thread called HELP PLZ asking a question found on one of the other threads.
Not Spam: Asking a question ON a thread that relates to it.