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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s
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Link Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2016 1:58 pm Post subject: How about a "report post" button? |
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It'd be nice to have a button beside a posting that allows you to directly report it to a moderator or administrator.
It would make it easier for you to identify commercial spammers and get rid of them as quickly as possible.
Also, it would serve to bring your attention to comments made that are not generally constructive and in the spirit of this community.
Sometimes we do get the occasional rampaging jerk, you know. Somebody who just REFUSES to play nice.
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kal Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 17860 Location: Ottawa, Canada
TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7
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Link Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2016 2:17 pm Post subject: Re: How about a "report post" button? |
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Thanks for the suggestions.
cmjohnson wrote: | It would make it easier for you to identify commercial spammers and get rid of them as quickly as possible. |
Not really true here. Reason being that at least one of us checks the forum daily and erases these spammers. Having a button to send me an email or PM that there's a spammer would not get it done any faster. It would be counterproductive as it would be one extra thing I'd have to erase.
A button like this works if the mods are not active and not looking at everything. As it stands traffic here is low such that I can easily once a day glance at the 'recent posts' list at the top of the main forum page and see if there are any spammers that have posted. I've been doing it daily for almost 10 years now myself and trust myself to do it like this more than hoping that someone sees it and takes the time to click the report button.
Often the worse thing about a spam post is all the PMs and emails I have to wade through because people want to be helpful and let us know that a spammer has posted.
Quote: | Also, it would serve to bring your attention to comments made that are not generally constructive and in the spirit of this community.
Sometimes we do get the occasional rampaging jerk, you know. Somebody who just REFUSES to play nice. |
The short answer:
While it mostly holds true for the Off Topic forum, the community here has basically voted and said they do NOT want to be moderated.
There were lots of long discussions/arguments about this ~1 year ago where we attempted to moderate discussions. Moderating is a massive can of worms.
For your reading pleasure:
http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37739
http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37730
http://www.curtpalme.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37760
Edit: I see now why you're asking based based on this thread. We've issued a warning. We're fairly lax with people here but eventually enough may be enough in certain situations.
Kal
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My basement/HT/bar/brewery build 2.0
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s
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Link Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 11:54 am Post subject: |
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OK, another suggestion: Require a new member's first five posts to be reviewed by a moderator before they're posted.
This should adequately serve to filter out all the idiot spammers we've had come visit us recently.
If someone joins to post commercial spam, they'll do it within five posts. Then the mod deletes that account and their posts never even show up on the board.
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kal Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 17860 Location: Ottawa, Canada
TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7
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Link Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 1:27 pm Post subject: |
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That would just create a lot more work for mods. Every new member post would have to reviewed, and the offenders deleted anyway, similar to what's done now. So all it does is add work for mods and would annoy the legitimate new users as their posts would take time to show up (not much however). The only upside is that others would never see spam posts which is a legit benefit.
What I really need to do is install a better CAPTCHA - Google's got a better one that I've been meaning to figure out how to install.
Kal
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My basement/HT/bar/brewery build 2.0
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Curt Palme CRT Tech
Joined: 08 Mar 2006 Posts: 24301 Location: Langley, BC
TV/Projector: All of them!
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Link Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 2:19 pm Post subject: |
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there sure is a rash of new spammers recently, a few times a day it seems. Was very quiet for a while..
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kal Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 17860 Location: Ottawa, Canada
TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7
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cmjohnson
Joined: 03 Apr 2006 Posts: 5180 Location: Buried under G90s
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Link Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2016 5:20 am Post subject: |
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We're getting more commercial spammers again. Might I suggest that the new member registration process should include a one question test that ensures that the person attempting to register knows SOMETHING about ANYTHING as pertaining to home theatre in some relevant capacity? "Enter the brand name of the TV or projector you use most often." SOMETHING.
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kal Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 17860 Location: Ottawa, Canada
TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7
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Link Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2016 3:08 pm Post subject: |
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Yup. My TheElectricBrewery.com forum is getting 10x as many spammers as here. It's actually pretty clean here by comparison. Thank you to the other mods who help nuked these spammers. It's appreciated.
There are already two anti-spam questions during registration. These are questions that do not require human verification such as "Which item is not a colour: Orange, Apple, Yellow, Red". I already change these questions about a once a week as automated spamming systems pick them up the answers and allow easy registration by the next spammer. Spammers use automated tools to spam: When one gets stuck during registration the spammer gets a notification through their spamming tool about where it got 'stuck', they manually enter the answer, it gets logged in a database and then the next 1,000 spammers don't get asked.
Adding a question like you propose would require human verification which is something I don't really have the time or the interest to do. It also slows down registration which people find annoying (it's annoying to have to wait for someone to verify your results). It also wouldn't stop spammers anyway. Everyone can name a brand of TV or whatever question you propose. You have to make sure that the question can be answered by anyone, not just those interested in HT. We're only trying to distinguish human for computer. Their knowledge of home theater should not factor in as they may not know much about HT, which is why they're here. It's unfortunate, but until someone starts posting, there's often no way to tell if someone's a spammer or not.
Want to help out? Sign up to be a club member which helps run and pay for this forum. Funding the forum allows me to spend more time managing the forum, looking into upgrading the software/adding features. Right now it just barely pays for the hosting fees and given the general lack of interest in HT, spending more time and money on the forum is somewhat pointless.
Kal
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My basement/HT/bar/brewery build 2.0
Last edited by kal on Wed Jul 27, 2016 3:31 pm; edited 4 times in total
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ecrabb Forum Moderator
Joined: 13 Mar 2006 Posts: 15909 Location: Utah
TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010
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Link Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2016 3:19 pm Post subject: |
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I totally agree with Kal.
The commercial spam posts aren't a big deal, IMHO. Once a day, I delete a couple of posts about cheap kitchens (along with the user that posted them). It takes me about 30 seconds to do on my phone. Easy peasy. Done.
Even if several of the mods had to do that twice a day, we wouldn't even come close to racking up the time to offset what it would take to implement a system to stop it. I know the spam posts are annoying - we're all annoyed by them - but it's just not worth the time to build something to stop what is at worst, a mild nuisance.
SC
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kal Forum Administrator
Joined: 06 Mar 2006 Posts: 17860 Location: Ottawa, Canada
TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7
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