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How about a "report post" button?

 
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cmjohnson




Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s


PostLink    Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2016 1:58 pm    Post subject: How about a "report post" button? Reply with quote


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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: 17850
Location: Ottawa, Canada

TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7


PostLink    Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2016 2:17 pm    Post subject: Re: How about a "report post" button? Reply with quote

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. Wink

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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cmjohnson




Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
Location: Buried under G90s


PostLink    Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 11:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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Joined: 06 Mar 2006
Posts: 17850
Location: Ottawa, Canada

TV/Projector: JVC DLA-NZ7


PostLink    Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 1:27 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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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Curt Palme
CRT Tech



Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 24296
Location: Langley, BC

TV/Projector: All of them!


PostLink    Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 2:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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PostLink    Posted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 2:39 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yup. This forum's actually not that bad right now - at the same time that we started to get more here I started getting 5x as many on my brewing forum. They seem to post at night. Every morning there's 10 spammers for me to nuke.

Kal

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cmjohnson




Joined: 03 Apr 2006
Posts: 5180
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PostLink    Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2016 5:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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Location: Ottawa, Canada

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PostLink    Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2016 3:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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. Wink 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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Last edited by kal on Wed Jul 27, 2016 3:31 pm; edited 4 times in total
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ecrabb
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Joined: 13 Mar 2006
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PostLink    Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2016 3:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

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
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Joined: 06 Mar 2006
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PostLink    Posted: Wed Jul 27, 2016 3:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Yup. Right now it's really about the effort vs reward.

I did spent some time looking at updating the Google RECAPTCHA we use here to the newest version. The one we use was compromised some years ago and spammers know how to get around it.... The new one's easier to use too (it's the check box you click that says "I am not a robot" that many of you have seen: https://www.google.com/recaptcha/intro/index.html ).

Just have to find some more time to do this but given that the incentive is very low, it's low on the priority list.

Kal

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