Suggestion Something needs to be done about spam.

[cearp]

Lately there have been some malicious users spamming the site, but even before, occasionally there is 'generic' spam, like most forums get.
Can we not make the first 5, the first 10 posts of a user hidden and need to be approved by a mod to be shown?
So, other users will see nothing, or simply see 'awaiting moderation'.
And once a mod comes along and looks in the list, they can either approve the user/post or ban them.

It seems other forums have some things like this, why can't we have it here?
Is it too much work or something?

I just hate seeing people post junk here

 

[CheatFreak47]

My thought is, how you going to convince people to not reply to it. Any reprimand from staff against people just posting is likely to create more of these spammers and over unease. Accusations of abusive staff and whatnot.

I agree that there are things that the community can't avoid, and that we should change how we react to spammers, noobs, etc. to keep it in check. But again, how do you get everyone one the same page?

I believe that bumping spam is definitely something that is easy to accidentally do especially if a lot of people are participating in the bumping of a spam thread, and that's why I think that yes, exceptions should be made. Some people legitimately get caught in the fire, it's happened to myself and a handful of others before. For those people, a simple tag over in the DO NOT BUMP SPAM thread is all that's really needed for them to get the idea. This is a problem that moderation alone can't simply solve, because it's a rule that is often broken by accident.

More or less what I'm saying is I think mods should be handing out more warnings to people that are repeat offenders of this rule, and even suspending people for it if they keep doing it.

 

[Kioku]

I believe that bumping spam is definitely something that is easy to accidentally do especially if a lot of people are participating in the bumping of a spam thread, and that's why I think that yes, exceptions should be made. Some people legitimately get caught in the fire, it's happened to myself and a handful of others before. For those people, a simple tag over in the DO NOT BUMP SPAM thread is all that's really needed for them to get the idea. This is a problem that moderation alone can't simply solve, because it's a rule that is often broken by accident.

More or less what I'm saying is I think mods should be handing out more warnings to people that are repeat offenders of this rule, and even suspending people for it if they keep doing it.

Warnings are fine and dandy.. However you can tell when someone is intentionally doing it.

 

[SonicCloud]

i have read a bit about shadow banning trolls, where they don't know they are banned so they keep on having their fun but no one can see it, and they (at least some) think that people are just bored and ignoring them better than just an immediate ban i think.
but it needs a bit more implementation on the forum, but many forum plugins/extensions have stuff like this i believe so it could be quite easy!

That's actually a good idea!

 

[Xanthe]

On my own forum I did what @cearp is suggesting, but only for the first post. It's normally pretty obvious if the first post is from a troll, or a spambot. Of course it's not perfect (I did it to combat spam bots that were getting past ReCaptcha), but it's something.

If you do it for just the first post, it may delay a new member for a few hours, or a day, but that's better than having a 10 page thread of people trolling the troll, and having literally no way to stop the troll from just signing up for a new account.

What is your forum? I'd love to see it! I'm considering starting my own...

 

[Drakia]

What is your forum? I'd love to see it! I'm considering starting my own...

My forum isn't active any more, it was from when I did Bukkit plugin development, haven't used it in years

 

[Issac]

I don't really see the need for anything special to deal with the spammers. "There's nothing we can do" - yes there is: the report button.

It's really not that big of a deal with the spam, it's not that frequent and overwhelming in amount. Noob floods / pokefloods / haxfloods with repeating questions ad nauseam are far more annoying / distracting.

 

[Deleted User]

I don't really see the need for anything special to deal with the spammers. "There's nothing we can do" - yes there is: the report button.

It's really not that big of a deal with the spam, it's not that frequent and overwhelming in amount. Noob floods / pokefloods / haxfloods with repeating questions ad nauseam are far more annoying / distracting.

"Hello, is there any way I can download Pokemon Sun and Moon? I'm on firmware 11.0 and I have Freakyforms. Any help would be appreciated."

 

[BurningDesire]

Praise @mashers
http://itrainapp.com/temp/

 

[Minox]

You know what really needs to be done? People need to start getting warnings/suspensions for bumping spam. There doesn't seem to be any real punishment, either that or the same people just don't care and keep doing it.

I was the first one to notice the spam this morning - had no time to deal with both spam and people bumping spam.

 

[The Catboy]

I was the first one to notice the spam this morning - had no time to deal with both spam and people bumping spam.

This is why I suggest bringing back the Mod Team to help out. We used to have both GM's and Mods, but recently we've only been relying on the GM's/Supers to do all the work. It would be nice to bring back the small team to help moderate again.

 

[Alex3DSU]

There should just be something on the website that only allows you to post every 5 minutes. There should also be something that deletes posts if they have an unapproved link in them (and by unapproved I mean links to websites that aren't approved or common on this site)

 

[The Catboy]

There should just be something on the website that only allows you to post every 5 minutes. There should also be something that deletes posts if they have an unapproved link in them (and by unapproved I mean links to websites that aren't approved or common on this site)

Limiting doesn't always fix the problem. The issue here are two problems;
1: people bumping spam threads in droves. It's completely unacceptable for a spam thread to reach 6 pages. That is a community issue.
2: Limit staff. The staff here are great, but they are people too. They can't be on 24/7 to moderate the forums. This can be solved by just bringing back the Mod team, so we have more staff active in the forums. Either that or promote a few more people to GM's.

Having a few extra staff members means that we can get a handle on these kinds of situations before they escalate to this level. It also means that members who continue to break the rules will get their punishment, before a thread reaches 6 pages and everyone involved just gets out of there without a warning.

 

[Deleted member 370671]

There should just be something on the website that only allows you to post every 5 minutes.

But how will I spam the EoF with my dank memes then? :'(

There should also be something that deletes posts if they have an unapproved link in them (and by unapproved I mean links to websites that aren't approved or common on this site)

lol, it seems like something some school forum would use.

Anyway, those are bad ideas. For some, not being able to post more than once per minute wouldn't be a problem, but for others - especially when you're asking something and trying to get a quick answer - that's a terrible way of trying to prevent spam.
As for the "only authorise approved links", what's the point exactly? "blocking spam"? For 1 spam link, 200 "legit" links are posted. So not only that would annoy users, but bypassing that kind of thing is super easy (htt!p:// myawesom emlgsite.co m).

 

[KingpinSlim]

There should just be something on the website that only allows you to post every 5 minutes. There should also be something that deletes posts if they have an unapproved link in them (and by unapproved I mean links to websites that aren't approved or common on this site)

Absolutely not. This solution would be fine for people who have more time than wits, but when i wish to have a forum-conversation this is usually time-critical and i can not wait 25 minutes for five replies back and forth.
Some people actually work, you know?

 

[Alex3DSU]

Absolutely not. This solution would be fine for people who have more time than wits, but when i wish to have a forum-conversation this is usually time-critical and i can not wait 25 minutes for five replies back and forth.
Some people actually work, you know?

I didn't mean limit replies. I only meant limit posting.

 

[Deleted User]

I didn't mean limit replies. I only meant limit posting.

Oh, so limiting thread creation?

 

[Joe88]

The problem is the users who keep bumping said spam to the front page, i'm not talking about users who accidentally posted in the spam thread not knowing the rules, but the users who know the rules and do it because they think its "fun".
This has been going on for weeks now, where its getting commonplace to see 20 page spam threads... and its always the same users doing it over and over again.
I think warnings were handed out to said users but more stricter punishment needs to be handed out imo because they just keep doing it.

 

[WeedZ]

There should just be something on the website that only allows you to post every 5 minutes. There should also be something that deletes posts if they have an unapproved link in them (and by unapproved I mean links to websites that aren't approved or common on this site)

No way dude. I'm usually involved in three or four threads at a time. Having to wait 5 minutes everytime I want to reply to one of these active conversations would be a major bitch.

 

[mashers]

Praise @mashers
http://itrainapp.com/temp/

Heh, thanks I was hoping a mod might notice it in that other thread I posted, but there doesn't seem to have been much interest so I haven't progressed it further

 

[wormdood]

Heh, thanks I was hoping a mod might notice it in that other thread I posted, but there doesn't seem to have been much interest so I haven't progressed it further

sorry to continue off-topic . . .but this is the first time i have seen this . . . amazing. great job