High Volumes Of Spam At Certain Times Of The Day

Personally I like the human acceptance of new members method, but this can be annoying if large volumes of bot traffic is coming in and thus makes it harder to weed out the genuine humans.

Some of the suggestions on here are ones I have used in the past (and the custom registration question and Q&A authentication are two of the best when used properly).

The restriction of new members posting is possibly one of the best (users with <25 posts would have to have each post manually approved by a mod) - this is one that not keeps the spammers out it also helps wheedle out hate posts by humans looking for traffic links to their own blogs etc).

just a few suggestions I can think of that could fit with the friendly approach of the MR site, without coming across as overly draconian or unfriendly.

stridemat said:

What happens if a new member joins and is unable to post their question?

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I would agree, I think a lot of members come here after googling an issue. They need help, so they post a question. And then GGJstudios comes and tells them that there is already X amount of threads on the topics already.

stridemat said:

Thats how I arrived here, and look at me now. Coming up 5 years later and still hanging around.

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Same here. Well I lurked for a good 6 months, but registered to post a question.

stridemat said:

What happens if a new member joins and is unable to post their question?

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Simple actually,

Many options to combat this:
Add to the setup instructions that posting a new thread requires (x) reply's to any board.

MR has no problem limiting other thread(s) to post counts.

Or, you can force a new signup to a hidden thread forcing a reply; then open the doors to new thread post(s).

I think many new comers can definitely find a million threads that they can reply to.

IDK, just throwing out ideas to lighten your load(s) as we all know spam is a PITA.

Good luck either way.

stridemat said:

Please don't take any offence, any help to lighten the load would be appreciated.

I was just of the opinion that most members join to ask a question and they won't know about searching so are unlikely to be able to find a relevant thread, tuhus create a new one.

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No offense taken stidemat.

But as bot's get smarter, it should involve more of a human element to help you mods expunge this auto spam.

I am just of the opinion that an extra step could certainly improve your volume.
Captcha, post count, whatever.

There is a way to be sure, but it will no doubt involve a tiny bit of extra effort on the new users part. I see nothing wrong with it.

Personally, I have been a member of other boards that require extra steps to sign up. As long as we express it in a meaningful way- no harm done.

But, it's not my site (of course) just attempting to assist.

Either way, good luck. I too will continue to report the spam posts as well.

One observation is that spammers like to click buttons, as almost every spam thread is tagged resolved. I'm curious to see if they'd fill out a CSS hidden form that sent the thread to moderation.

tigres said:

Why don't you just set the post count to x, and not allow new signups to create a new thread until they have x reply's in other threads?

Seems it would smack them down quite quick.- at least the new thread spams, which appear to be the biggest culprits.

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That would be effective... Although it might just start them spamming IN other people's threads, which would be possibly worse.

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kylera said:

If you need additional human spam monitors for different time zones, I would be willing to volunteer as I am based in East Asia

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Same here - Living in NZ I'm on at times when many of the Americans and Europeans are asleep or at work. We could have janitors, where their only moderating ability is deleting spam threads

Can't you just fix the sign up system so only human have access? Maybe an email verification or something.

MacNut said:

Can't you just fix the sign up system so only human have access? Maybe an email verification or something.

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Email verification doesn't even slow down many automated spammers.

mrsir2009 said:

We could have janitors, where their only moderating ability is deleting spam threads

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A similar thing was tried some years ago with users being "mini mods" but it just wasn't effective and was subsequently dropped.

A lot of the spam that comes in actually gets nuked before the members ever see it. We have ways of keeping it to a minimum, but the spammers always find ways of posting their stuff. It's a war that will never end and all we can do is keep up in the fight.

Keep reporting what you see and we will continue cleaning up their mess.

SandboxGeneral said:

A similar thing was tried some years ago with users being "mini mods" but it just wasn't effective and was subsequently dropped.

A lot of the spam that comes in actually gets nuked before the members ever see it. We have ways of keeping it to a minimum, but the spammers always find ways of posting their stuff. It's a war that will never end and all we can do is keep up in the fight.

Keep reporting what you see and we will continue cleaning up their mess.

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I always like when spammers post, because then I know what businesses I'll never ever ever support.

Maybe you guys should create a "blacklist" of spammers and their website/business and encourage forum members to not patronize them.

stridemat said:

Thats how I arrived here, and look at me now. Coming up 5 years later and still hanging around.

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It is how I arrived here, too.

Koodauw said:

Same here. Well I lurked for a good 6 months, but registered to post a question.

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It was much the same for me. Actually, it was not quite six months, but I bought a MBP, and then lurked for a few months before registering to post a question.

stridemat said:

Please don't take any offence, any help to lighten the load would be appreciated.

I was just of the opinion that most members join to ask a question and they won't know about searching so are unlikely to be able to find a relevant thread, tuhus create a new one.

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I agree completely; it takes a while to realise how the whole site works, and most newbies join to seek help as they have a problem which they would like to see addressed. When they join, they don't know about searching, and are unlikely to know that their particular issue could well have been asked already dozens of times and features in hundreds of threads.

A lot of people on the forum - and not just spammers - join, and post a few times, or sometimes only once, just to get an answer to a problem; anything which makes it more difficult for newbies to get the information they need (such as a threshold of 25 posts before you can make a thread, or even a threshold of five posts before you can create a thread), is something I'd view with some reluctance.