Soil tester
Paste a post and see which engagement-bait tells it triggers. A transparent phrase-matching toy with known false positives — not a judge of intent, context, or any community's rules.
Read this first. The Soil Tester is a toy. It matches phrases and formatting that often appear in engagement bait — “comment YES below”, “tag 3 friends”, “link in bio”, one-line-per-paragraph broetry, hashtag walls — and adds up weights into a score. It cannot read intent, account history, or the rules of the place you're posting in. A sincere “what do you think?” scores the same as a fake one. Use it to notice habits, not to judge people.
How it scores
Each detector below looks for one family of tells. The first match in a family counts once, with the weight shown; continuous signals (emoji density, hashtag count, very short lines, ALL CAPS) add a little more. The total is squashed onto a 0–99 scale with diminishing returns, then banded: Heirloom (under 22), Lightly tilled (under 48), Cultivated (under 74), Factory farm. The source is readable at /assets/farm-score.js; nothing is hidden.
| Detector | Weight | Looks for |
|---|---|---|
| Comment harvesting | 30 | “comment X below”, “drop a…”, “reply with”, “DM me”, the 👇 emoji |
| Tag / giveaway bait | 28 | “tag 3 friends”, “giveaway”, “to enter”, “follow + RT”, “winner announced” |
| Link-gating | 26 | “link in bio”, “comment and I'll send you…”, “want the template?” |
| Share / RT solicitation | 24 | “RT if”, “share this”, “repost”, “save this post”, “bookmark this” |
| Engineered outrage | 22 | “they don't want you to…”, “delete this”, “say it louder”, “controversial but” |
| Manufactured curiosity hook | 16 | “unpopular opinion”, “hot take”, “nobody talks about”, “here's why/how” |
| Broetry formatting | 15 | six or more lines where most are four words or fewer |
| Fake-question prompt | 14 | “thoughts?”, “agree?”, “am I the only one”, “who's with me” |
| Authority / growth flex | 13 | currency amounts, “0 → 10k”, “in just 30 days”, “went viral”, follower counts |
| Thread / listicle scaffolding | 12 | 🧵, “a thread:”, “7 lessons”, “1/12” |
| Emoji, hashtag, ALL-CAPS stuffing | 8–18 | density rather than any single phrase |
Known false positives
These are documented, not hypothetical. The research behind this guide inspected the scoring code and found that it will penalise:
- any post that uses the 👇 emoji to point at a legitimate instruction (+30);
- an ordinary tutorial that begins “here's how” (+16);
- a sincere “what do you think?” at the end of a real question (+14);
- a genuinely useful reference that says “save this post” (+24);
- any mention of revenue or a currency amount, regardless of context;
- threads, listicles, emoji and hashtag conventions that are simply native to a platform;
- very short inputs, which receive a non-zero baseline despite insufficient evidence.
The 0–99 output looks precise. It is not calibrated against any labelled corpus. If your score surprises you, read the signal list — the reasons are the useful part.
What to do with a result
- A high score on your own draft usually means the ask arrived before the contribution. Try leading with the thing that is useful even if nobody clicks — then decide whether the ask is still needed. See what actually worked.
- A high score on someone else's post tells you about the post, not the person. Platforms decide what counts as engagement spam; see weeds for their actual policies.
- Whatever the score, the venue's rule wins. Check where you're allowed to show up before posting anywhere.