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Spam reduction: restricting hyperlinks to a minimum post count?

B

Blue Velvet

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
I've seen it implemented on other forums where you need 5 or 10 posts to put a link into your post, along with other restrictions.

Is this possible? Is it worth doing? Just a thought.
 
It seems like a good idea. Either that or vB needs a Bayesian spam filter? 😀

If there are concerns, is an alternate possibility to require the account to be active for a time period? Like no link posting in the first 24 hours, etc? That also seems like it would deter a lot of bot or spammer types.
 
Sounds like a good idea to me, notably as there is spam currently in the Apple Industry Discussion forum at the moment...
 
skunk said:
(It's just above the Alt key, if you didn't know)
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It's always interesting how this gets garbled across key layouts. I guess it is technically above the Alt key on a US keyboard, although there are four or five keys in between the two. 😀
 
Blue Velvet said:
I've seen it implemented on other forums where you need 5 or 10 posts to put a link into your post, along with other restrictions.
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Yeah! There's another forum I've poked around on and they have an annoying (but purposeful) dialogue box (asking you to read and follow the forum rules, do a search, etc.) any time you try to start a thread or post a reply-- for the first ten times.
 
So much of these forums is dedicated to helping folks with problems that I would be hesitant to employ any restrictions on newbies that would hamper their ability to get the help they come here for in the first place. I can easily see newbies wanting to post links to suggestions they tried before coming here for help, etc.

I don't think the spam here is bad at all, and it gets cleaned up very quickly when reported. I'm not saying we shouldn't implement restrictions like this suggestion, but we do need to carefully think through their impact on folks for whom this will be their first experience with MR and who might not be in the best of moods to begin with from dealing with their problem.
 
I tend to agree with WildCowboy.
Some first time posters might like to post a link when asking a question.

They could of course post the url in plain text... Which would solve their problem of not being able to post a link.
Select, right-click, Go To Address

Also, to keep out spammerbots I would say 5 posts is more than enough as a limit.
 
I was gonna say "So much of these forums is dedicated to helping folks with problems that I would be hesitant to employ any restrictions on newbies that would hamper their ability to get the help they come here for in the first place. I can easily see newbies wanting to post links to suggestions they tried before coming here for help, etc." but it seems somebody already said that! 🙂

The people who spend 90% of their waking hours at MacRumors (you know who you are) tend to see the spam more than the general public does, because most spam is removed fairly promptly. So I think it's best to keep things open/friendly/easy for newbies despite the opportunity it leaves for (temporary) spam.
 
I can just imagine the first 5 replies to the newb who didn't put in a link to some article or another in a thread they start.

"link please"

"source?"

etc...
 
On the forums on Macosxhints.com (vBulletin), a new user's first 2 posts must be approved by mods before they will appear. This does a great job in reducing the spam (with the exception that some spammers are now savvy enough to wait until 3rd post before spamming). After 2 posts, users can post as normal.

Unfortunately it makes a lot of work for the mods, since every post has to be quickly skimmed for content. Of course, the traffic there is significantly lower than here, so it would be much more of a mod headache (here), but there's also significantly more active mods here than there.

But if arn is interested, I'm sure Rob will be more than happy to discuss it.
 
I feel like that makes a heck of a lot more work for the mods than simply deleting the spam. I guess I just don't find the spam all that prevalent and bothersome...maybe it's because I only spend 89% of my waking hours here.
 
yellow said:
Unfortunately it makes a lot of work for the mods, since every post has to be quickly skimmed for content. Of course, the traffic there is significantly lower than here, so it would be much more of a mod headache (here), but there's also significantly more active mods here than there.
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If we decided to adopt that system here, we would create "moderator nano" positions and recruit volunteers for the post approval team. However, that would be a lot of work simply to stop spam; deleting it after the fact is a lot less total work. Even though we have many dedicated members who would likely help us out by reviewing posts, I'd rather see them spend their time helping other people with problemsolving.
 
The "Nano Mod" sounds like a good idea but rather then for spam control why not have them scattered throughout the forums and patrol a designated thread. The ones that the Mods might not have time to get to. This could also be handy during big events when site traffic would be high.

Don't give them full power but just the ability to tidy up a thread.
 
WildCowboy said:
Rob Griffiths, the arn of MacOSXHints...
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Ah. I thought I had found a leaked Doctor Q name.


</excited> 😱

Doctor Q said:
If we decided to adopt that system here, we would create "moderator nano" positions and recruit volunteers for the post approval team. However, that would be a lot of work simply to stop spam; deleting it after the fact is a lot less total work. Even though we have many dedicated members who would likely help us out by reviewing posts, I'd rather see them spend their time helping other people with problemsolving.
Click to expand...

Wouldn't it be macrumors moderator (shuffle) then? 😉
 
MacNut said:
The "Nano Mod" sounds like a good idea but rather then for spam control why not have them scattered throughout the forums and patrol a designated thread. The ones that the Mods might not have time to get to. This could also be handy during big events when site traffic would be high.

Don't give them full power but just the ability to tidy up a thread.
Click to expand...
Do you mean designated forums, not designated threads? There would be advantages to that (we've had a few suggestions about having a Games moderator). But if we really wanted some forums patrolled separately by "specialists", we'd have to have multiple Mod nanos for each forum, because each of them might want to sleep now and then, and maybe even go to school or work!

That won't matter for spam, however, which can appear anywhere anytime and is one reason we try to have moderators around almost all hours of the day.

skoker said:
Ah. I thought I had found a leaked Doctor Q name.
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Of course, there's no proof that I don't run MacOSXHints (in my spare time) so it could be me! 🙂
 
Spam doesn't seem that bad and I agree that limiting first posts could be either more work for the moderators, or less user-friendly for the newbies (or both). Just out of interest though, would preventing hyperlinks mean that when people post a link, their entire post doesn't get submitted, or is the hyperlink merely un-linked but shown as regular text?
 
Doctor Q said:
Do you mean designated forums, not designated threads? There would be advantages to that (we've had a few suggestions about having a Games moderator). But if we really wanted some forums patrolled separately by "specialists", we'd have to have multiple Mod nanos for each forum, because each of them might want to sleep now and then, and maybe even go to school or work!
Click to expand...
Something like a floating mod, the only power would be to edit or delete posts. they can be assigned to a specific forum or can be just roamers of the whole site that just look for things that don't belong during their daily surfing.
 
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