Message about spam

[carmangary]

I'm not sure how this board works but would it be possible to make it so that screen the first posts of people? In other words, you have to approve the first post of someone before it shows up. After the first post, they would be unrestricted. The reason for this is because the spammers come in and post one message. If you screened those you could eliminate the spam from the board and ban the user all at once.

[cruch]

Good ida! ;D

[jkaiser3000]

Sort of a good idea, but it means a lot of work for someone already with his hands full . Anyway, I'm sure there are people here willing to take some of the workload off his busy hands :P

[cruch]

True! There is every days spammers in here!! AM so bored of it!!

[allthatwhichis]

I just try to have fun with them. Spec's been pretty good about deleting them sooner or later. Cruch's been getting to em first latly, I been slackin. :roll: I wish they come back to look at the replies sometime. I always prefer the person I'm talking shitte about to hear it.

Hey, we could make our own bot to take care of spammers. Lil AI action...

[cruch]

heheh!!
I really hate spammers!!

[buffo]

Spec's been pretty good about deleting them sooner or later.

Usually he deletes the accounts right away. Recently, I've seen spammers deleted within hours of their first post. (Keep an eye on the memberlist and watch them come and go!)

I think part of the problem is that we reply to the spammers. Sure, it's fun to vent your frustration (and I'm as guilty of this as anyone), but we've already established that the spammers never return to read what we've written. So now we've just made it that much more difficult for Spec to kill the thread. (If the only post in the thread is spam, there's no harm in deleting the whole thread, but if there are other posts from registered users in there, then he probably feels the need to keep it.) So by replying to the spammer, we ensure that his message stays in the database. That's probably not in our best interests.

Perhaps moderators would help, but that opens up all sorts of other issues. Personally, I think Spec is doing a great job, and I don't want to try to force him to tackle another hurdle (moderators) if he's not ready for it. Much as we'd all like to help out, having moderators (or sysops, as they were called back in the day) can really be a headache for the owner of the forum. In some cases, managing the moderation can end up being more work than just managing the spam. (Disclaimier: I used to be co-sysop on a couple BBS's, and at one point ran my own for a while, and yes, I still have the scars to prove it.)

Carmangry's idea might help, but it would also hurt the first-timers that find this place and are just blown away by the cool community we have. I've read some first posts from people that clearly betray their excitement at finding this forum. I'd hate to silence those folks just to save on some spam.

Adam

[allthatwhichis]

Yea, it's a can't win situtation, that's why I try to get a small laugh. Spec, don't ever worry about deleting a spam reply from me. On the 4 or 5 forums I lurk around, I always like to toss a degrading reply in a spam thread before I report it. Just incase the spammer comes back. If you want I'll stop, but life will be so much less interesting... :roll:

[Spec]

I'm not sure how this board works but would it be possible to make it so that screen the first posts of people? In other words, you have to approve the first post of someone before it shows up. After the first post, they would be unrestricted. The reason for this is because the spammers come in and post one message. If you screened those you could eliminate the spam from the board and ban the user all at once.

The board is set up so that moderation of a user based on their first post is impossible, its simply not in the software, go figure.

My options are Administratively moderate all new user accounts... which i was doing for about a year. The problem with that about 1/2 of the spammers dont fill in their profile so I have no way of telling if they are a user or not until they post. Hell, some of them even register with valid gmail accounts... What happened is that I would let about 1/4 of the spammers in because i had no information to go on and keep about 1/2 of the new users from getting in in the first place.

Besides: most users when they sign up usually have something to say right then, if they have to wait even 4 hours to get the "welcome to the forums!" mail, its very likely they wont come back.

Conversely: Guest posting being allowed gets a lot more users in because they can then say something without having to register an account. However: 90% of the guest posts are spam. I look at the stats every so often and I can see that a "guest post" is tried every 30 or so minutes. Undoubtedly spammers, no one else would know what the "HTTP Get/Post" commands are.

The other option is allow users to verify their account(which is what i have it set up as now), its quick enough to not lose the "New Blood" wanting to join and it keeps about about 75% of spammers out.

Unfortunately where there is money to be made there are people out there who will gladly program a smart bot to break through whatever security I have in place.

Another option is to make the board visible to members only... But that kills any chance of a new user signing up and spiders would not cache the text in essence hiding this board from anyone that would be interested in joiuning or reading the plethora of good information here.

Anything I do other than "letting the board run wild" has repercussions. But letting the board "run wild" would increase administrative duty by an order of magnitude... Its annoying cleaning 5 spam posts and 10 spam accounts a day, much less 100. A big nasty catch-22 if you will.

For example now:

There is a CAPTCHA on the registration page(The type in the text in this hard to read graphic thing) There are many bots that can concatenate the results and get through

Theres also User mail verification: many bots can register email accounts at places like hotmail. The only way around this one would be to blacklist the entire domain... Last I checked there are about 10 users with hotmail accounts.

Theres *also* a COPPA thing that I warped the acceptance variables on... Turns out bots know what to look for and just substitute the correct variable in the http header.

Man... I hate spam more than you know, really. But theres no way around it, much less a quick and dirty one...

Really: I wish something worked and would keep me(or any future moderators) from spending *any* time at all on this.

[allthatwhichis]

I wonder if the violet handheld got you a lil more popular with them than before. I haven't been around long but the spam traffic seems to have gotten much worse since about that time. But again, I've only been around a few months.