How to get rid of all the Forum spam

Does anyone know if there is a way to block all this middle-eastern viagra true love free money forum spam? Or ar we just waiting on I.T. to update a workaround? Its ruining this forum

 

We're waiting on a couple of forum updates, yes. In the interim, the moderation staff have some tools available to bulk remove spam and spam-generating user accounts, but it's a manual process and obviously depends on the availability of the mod team.

It's our hope that once a pledge becomes a pre-requisite for posting on the forum, the spam issue will disappear or at least be severely curtailed. Perhaps not surprisingly, however, implementing a paywall isn't a trivial exercise; it will be online soon, but is not as yet.

 

I just go through What's New.. scan over it real quick to see I'm not missing anything.. see what forum it's happening in .. go there and Mark Forum Read until it's removed. Only takes a second..

 

Good idea Bowen. I can see what I need, but its annoying. Thanks, Ultima Codex, for an informative and prompt response. Keep up the good work! .....and bacon and whiskey, just because.....

 

mmmmm baaacon...

 

It is a pity that they are having to do this, for 2 reasons 1) just because someone hasn't locked in a purchase yet doesn't mean they wont and if people thinking about it want to ask questions or make comments about what they want from a product you want them to spend money on, well losing that information is only going to hurt sales both in the short term and the long term

Secondly it has the potential to restrict negative comments, both from people who are potential customers and people who have already made purchases who want to make a post anonymously. Just because someone wants to make a comment anonymously doesn't mean it shouldn't be said or that its not important something be said, saying something (especially when its against the majority opinion) is a risk and people don't like taking risks, and giving them that bit of anonymity allows them to make the comments (which could be quite important) without taking as big a risk and the more frank and honest people are, the better the game will be.

Can this be abused? sure there are lots of ways it can be abused, it puts the accuracy of polls at risk (but then no one pays any attention to them anyway so I don't know why they are even there), they can be used to hurl abuse and harass people which is DEFINITELY not acceptable and sadly they can be used by bots but they also have so many positive benifits.

The more frank and honest advice rather than just "Yay RG is a god YAY", the better the game has the potential to be (it also depends on people listening to that advice)

Sadly a lot of the posts around here remind me of THIS

 

Please, no. The paywall to post is a bad idea. Seriously, don't do it.

 

Ultima:

Your efforts and hard work in this area are much appreciated...

Some thoughts...

I understand that, as a business, you must respond and protect the integrity of your network servers, etc. After all you are providing a product (game) for your customers ...(and the fact that we have a say in the development is awesome)...
I do believe that requiring a pledge before you can post may may need some more discussion...as you say...it may reduce the spam...but not entirely... as well as being a lot of work for you and your staff.
A thought:
Have two forums...one with paid pledges (encrypted) and one without...you will be supporting your most ardent clients...(paid up)

the new folks will have to endure the spam...and the creativity of those new folks can still be reviewed...

the pledge forum can be secured and somewhat free of spam...and they can continue with providing the creativity, bug control, ideas as your forum was intended...

Thanks for listening...

Nepenthor
Pax et Veritas

"How snug is your Hobbit Hole?"

 

Better idea would be to require approval for posting until you reach a certain point, it would still allow anonymity and new potential customers to post without the spam (because that's just not going to get approved). It DOES mean putting faith in the company that negative comments will still be authorised but then if they wanted to they could just delete negative comments currently anyway

How much work is a spam bot going to really do? posting even 10 REAL posts (positive or negative) just to get through to the point of a mod or admin saying "yes you are a real person"

 

I'd be more comfortable with pledge gating the forums if they added a pre-release $5 Sampler Pledge, which allowed access either for one month or until the next wipe, whichever was longer.

 

I agree with Nepenthor. Just do a new forum room. Make everything that is normally accessable ok, but behind a paywall. Make a new room for new accounts, with minimal posting permissions. Make everything in the normal posts in normal rooms "read-only" for unpaid accounts

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk

 

As I suggested in a similar thread:

All "paid-up" members have full posting rights.

Posts by non paid members or new arrivals are "subject to moderation". The obviously genuine posts are waved through. As I think Tahru said, trusted community members could help with this, to ease the load on the moderators. (ie if the thread title isn't "vishal love solution" or similar, it's OK, and wave it on) The mods retain the power to delete the spam and associated accounts.
Then the spam would never even hit the forum, and the sad little spammers may give up.

 

I like this idea much better than only allowing paid accounts to post.

 

We've talked about the option of having new users' first few posts be subject to moderator approval. And while that would certainly serve to limit the appearance of spam in the forums proper, it would actually wind up increasing the workload on the moderation team fairly substantially. We're already finding that, as a team, we are being stretched to the breaking point dealing with the spam as we currently are. To add the additional workload of having to filter out legitimate posts by first-time/recent users from among the spam...it would be too much for most of us to manage. Especially because there aren't endless hordes of moderators patrolling the forum at all hours.

The obvious solution would be to add more moderators, of course. But we've had a shortage of volunteers of late.

My understanding -- and take these words as what they are, which is to say that they are mine and not the official word of Portalarium -- is that even those who have pledged at the $5 level will have unfettered access to the General Forums (Dev+ will continue to be access-restricted as it currently is). It still requires a minimum spend, but it's a very low buy-in that should hopefully not be an insurmountable burden for those who are genuinely on the fence and still want to contribute their time and thoughts to the game's development process.

The spam bots have been getting increasingly aggressive -- today has been staggeringly bad -- and seem undeterred by the CAPTCHAs that were put in place for new users a while ago. To be fair, spam software exists which has OCR capability baked right in, which is thus able to defeat many CAPTCHA styles. It's also possible that these spam bots are not bots at all, that they are in fact controlled by human beings in some way. Either way, the scale of the problem has only been increasing. Coupled with the aforementioned shortage of moderators, a solution is required with has both immediate and impactful effects, and which doesn't place significant additional strain on the moderation team...or on people like FireLotus and Lum, who in addition to helping out with these issues are tasked with dialogue-writing roles.

I believe this option was also looked at. The problem with it is that features of the forum such as the New Threads list will still pick up all the spam, thus drowning out other new/updated content thereupon. Too, this is technically how the forum is structured already; there are already exclusive forums for those who have pledged at the Developer level or above, and then there are the General Forums for everyone else. Obviously, we aren't going to abandon the General Forums to the spam bots, but creating a third forum where we simply don't bother to moderate is...really not any different than that in some respects. Turtles all the way down, etc.

Closing thought: In the time it took me to write this, I also had to remove about ten spam accounts and thirty or so spam messages...and this during a part of the day that has tended, before today, to be relatively free and clear of spam-related issues.

This isn't an ideal situation, and the solutions to it are similarly non-ideal. Still, the decision to restrict most forum access to paid users has seemingly worked out rather well for other developers -- ArtCraft Entertainment (Crowfall) and OtherSide Entertainment (Underworld Ascendant), to name a couple. And it isn't as though there aren't already many vocal members of the community here, paid backers no less, who will happily voice their displeasure with the direction SotA is headed in...if it comes to that. Similarly, it's my understanding that the comments on both Steam and the SotA website proper will not be impacted by this, so there will still be other avenues for users who have not pledged at all to communicate their thoughts to Portalarium.

 

Thanks for the thorough explanation. You definitely are using every tool or technique at your disposal...to combat this problem...I do applaud your efforts...

I will keep this short as you are busy ....and I want to continue to be in ignore mode...for my purposes...

Thanks

Nepenthor
Pax et Veritas

"How snug is your Hobbit Hole?"