Captcha for Posting

Thanks you for taking measures to protect the integrity of the forums.

 

The first one I saw was for Bahrain marriage experts.

 

It sucks so bad that this world is full of scumbags playing the numbers to profit on a handful of sheep. This is such an awesome community and it is ashamed that barriers have to be erected just because of malicious jerk offs in some third world country paying coins in an internet cafe.

But if that is what it takes to keep the peace and community focused on the the better side of life, I am 100% behind it.

BTW: the real idiot is the scammer because there are no sheep to be had on this forum.

 

Most of the posts have terminology in commom. Is it not possible to filter out spam based on strings that appear in the posts? Granted, the spammer could change the post content.

 

This is getting out of hand.

 

not really. That is the normal amount of spam over the last 2 weeks. You guys are only now more aware of it and our mods can't keep an eye on it 24h. I can just tell you what I do.

First: Report each spammer once as spam. There is no need to report each post. They only need one post to get the whole spammer out of the forum.
Second: If you find spam posts that are more then 1 hour old and you have reported them, take a look in the chat and call one of the mods. They can't be in forum 24h.

 

Thats what i do since two weeks. Except going to chat and calling a mod.
Thats why i think its getting out of hand ;-)

 

It would be nice to be able to report more than one spam account within seconds, but the delay between posts that is imposed on posters hinders people who report spam as well as the spammers themselves.

I think it is a bit much to bother a Dev on the weekend, no matter how bad the spam is.

Has any0ne considered using black magic against the perpetrator? There is a telephone number we could call...

 

Ignore User

Its done in seconds.

 

Report and ignore is your friend.

 

How bizarre, there's a snowball's chance in hell the intended audience will see it here.

I guess the solution could be to limit posting permissions: moderated posting unless there is a pledge value of at least $45 associated with the account. Or at least a timer between posts for new accounts. Both to be lifted upon review of initial posting activity.

 

How about this for an idea?

All "paid-up" members have unrestricted posting privileges

A "non-paid" or new forum member, on making a post, will see the message "This post is awaiting moderation". All genuine posts would be waved through, the spam would be deleted immediately, along with the associated account.

This does represent work for the moderators; it may not be more onerous than the daily cleanup they currently have to do. And the spammers should soon realise that they have zero chance of making it to the forum.

 

Great ideas. Another enhancement to this is that established community members could be promoted to have new-topic-approval permissions. This would ease the pain on the moderators and take advantage of the community of supporters to help out. I would happily volunteer to help approve topics from new members, but I would not want to have moderation permissions.

The discourse forum has features like this, so it is not like an original idea.

 

Pity them Bowen...pity them Bowen...
Personally I would hang them up by their big toes...and let them hang there for a few minutes...and their punishment would be to provide cold beer and bangors, shepards pie to all the devs...for a month...

They are not worth the time we are all spending on this topic...by spending time and energy on this topic it feeds into their childish ways...it is exactly what they want...attention!
And i say...dont give it to them...

Pity...and then ignore...ignore...big time!!

Nepenthor
Pax et Veritas...

 

Atogrim:

I agree Atogrim...

Consider the technology of the world we live in today...there will always be "spammers, hackers, phishing, trojans"...unfortunately the nature of the beast...

it is here and we must live with it...

I am sorry our hard working Devs...have to deal with this...i suppose they cannot ignore...it is their product they are working to protect and providing some assurance of integrity for us... and that i appreciate...

but....

the rest of us....

Let us "ignore" and move on...

Nepenthor
Pax et Veritas

"How snug is your Hobbit Hole?"

 

This is not how it works though. The population in the target forum is irrelevant.
Instead the real target is search engine bots. It works like this:
Someone pays to get "search engine optimization".
Some of that money goes to the SPAMmer, they put in SPAM which links to your site.
Search engine bots trawl through forums to get search algorithm data, find links from legit forum to paid for site.
Next time when 'mark' searches on topic of X, like balck magik [sic], the paid for site is higher in the search engine results.

It doesn't even matter if you clean up the SPAM, if enough of it is there when the bot trawls through then you get a higher rating.

This doesn't work as well with advanced search engine bots like google, but with something like the indian equivalent it works wonders.

 

Interesting.

 

At this point it seems like it would be better put a filter on forum titles (certain length, keywords, etc.) and just kick them to moderation before being posted. Not sure if the forum software allows that, but seems like that would elimiate them as no other legitmate post has titles like that. Seems like all other methods are not really working, and I can only imagine the pain the mods are going through.

 

Looks like the no lifers are back in full force today. So much spam.

 

I need more likes!!

Cypher Black