Forum spam management?

[Wally]

I don't care. I do it for "fun" not for respect. There's been countless times where i've tried to resign but that's never worked out.

 

[Caine]

Like we have time anymore..

I can't judge the amount of work you do to keep this place clean. It is mostly invisible to me (though I F5 enough to see plenty of spam before it gets removed). Despite that you do not do it for respect, I do respect you for it. It is a dirty job, and I am glad that you are doing it.

We will need a bunch more moderators otherwise we'd be tempted to just flag every jdtay / klapse / SONY post as spam

Would that yield so many false positives? I doubt it

 

[ible]

just prevent anybody from posting. whatever makes the mods' lives easier!

 

[rygD]

I don't care. I do it for "fun" not for respect. There's been countless times where i've tried to resign but that's never worked out.

I am the one that gets no respect. Well, the mods too, but I meant I wasn't on your list, and I sometimes feel some of my posts might irritate others when I see them later.

If possible, though, I think it would help to have some restrictions on first posts, or something like that. Depends on what is built in to the software.

 

[Caine]

I meant I wasn't on your list, and I sometimes feel some of my posts might irritate others when I see them later.

Perhaps your feeling is wrong. You do not shy away from difficult and/or unconventional topics and stand up for your own opinion, I respect that.

 

[rygD]

I also argue against my opinion sometimes. Gotta challenge everything and everyone.

 

[Caine]

Now you disappoint me. That is so consistent

 

[EvilDragon]

Actually, we have a full spam management system installed, which works similar to spam filters for emails: Based on a couple of triggers, it calculates a score and if it's too high it'll reject the user / post.

During the last two days, over 600 spam users / posts have been rejected... just thought I'd let you know how few spam actually gets through!

 

[rygD]

If username contains 19, the post has a poll with identical options, and if the thread title is a URL are strong indicators.

 

[WizardStan]

The filter may catch 99% of the spam but it still misses some very obvious things that should be easy to spot. The instant someone creates a poll with a URL that should be an automatic fail.

 

[levi]

I listed the places that URLs could be disallowed for on the previous page.

Yes, that would capture the few that I've seen in the past few months while you mods have been temporarily away I guess. They either had:
- URL in title of post
- URL in body of post
- URL in poll question
- URL in profile location
- URL in profile status

If we could just get a filter that automatically reports users matching any of the first four of those (and were to hide it until a mod saw it, if that's possible?) then that would cover a lot of the current spam that I see. I've not noticed this '19' business yet FWIW.

 

[rygD]

It is common in usernames. Like "rygD19". It used to be 19 00 or 1900, which makes me wonder if it is the same person/bots.

 

[levi]

More often than not spammers claim to be female as well, so I guess this 19 is designed to titillate men into thinking they're legal and not likely to have a serious boyfrield by that age. But as I say, I don't recall having seen it. Normally when I see a number in a username (although not in this place) it tends to be the year of birth more often than not, but if it's 19 (indicating 1919 currently) it's unlikely to be that.

 

[rygD]

The 19 (00) started after realistic names had been used for a bit. Currently it is kind of a mix. I just killed one with a poll for the same url, and the first name was something like Izzzz