Implemented Spam and mod activity

Pangaearocks

Pangaearocks

Planter
Currently there are 8 (!) spam threads in the main forum, and it's been like that for a few hours I reckon. I've reported it, but that's all regular users can do, and each time it seems like there is a rather big delay before threads are deleted (and hopefully the spam accounts). Do you have modders active in different time zones, so you can keep tabs on the forum, at least reports, when US modders are sleeping? (I assume the main bulk of users and staff are from there)

It's frustrating to see the forum get almost a whole full page of spam threads, making it hard to engage with the real threads :-(
 
Quirinea

Quirinea

Farmer
Yeah. And I noticed again that delay (20 seconds between reports...???). If that is not something in the software that cannot be changed, could that delay be removed? The idea of someone bullying by fast-reporting several legitimate posts seems pretty far-fetched, as the problem of spam downpours has been seen many a time.
 
Magically Clueless

Magically Clueless

Administrator
Staff member
We understand the frustration, and we're talking about some ways to make some new accounts go through a manual approve process so we can avoid some of these spam accounts slipping through. Many of them do get caught (I removed a spammer that was unable to post but had the same pattern a minute ago) but unfortunately the system isn't perfect, so the forum fills up with junk until one of us three come on to get rid of them.

We have a few ideas going on and we'll definitely let everyone know when we go through some updates
 

Ereo

Helper
Pangaearocks said:
It's frustrating to see the forum get almost a whole full page of spam threads, making it hard to engage with the real threads :-(
Click to expand...
I've taken to report and ignore the spammer from their profile, then refresh the site and you won't see those threads any more. Even though it would be nice if less of them would come through, this works pretty well to keep the forum usable.
 

NullObjects

Tiller
I've been looking at them for a long while back and they all have whatsapp numbers or some common phrase/theme that could be filtered on. Could that be useful to do?

I know in another thread it was mentioned the forum already has some anti-spam software but it was limited? And if this sort of logic is already in there (I don't actually know too much about forum software is structured), could it be improved upon?
 
Pangaearocks

Pangaearocks

Planter
Ereo said:
I've taken to report and ignore the spammer from their profile, then refresh the site and you won't see those threads any more. Even though it would be nice if less of them would come through, this works pretty well to keep the forum usable.
Click to expand...
Thanks for this suggestion, hadn't thought about using the ignore function. Yet more spam popped up in the main forum now, so I reported one of the threads and the user, and then blocked it. At least the forum looks clean on my end, which is nice until the moderators can deal with it. Hope they come up with a workable solution, though, because this is happening every single day. And it looks like they are taking advantage of the long delay until threads are deleted, so maybe the timing isn't a coincidence.
 
Quirinea

Quirinea

Farmer
Pangaearocks said:
Thanks for this suggestion, hadn't thought about using the ignore function. Yet more spam popped up in the main forum now, so I reported one of the threads and the user, and then blocked it. At least the forum looks clean on my end, which is nice until the moderators can deal with it. Hope they come up with a workable solution, though, because this is happening every single day. And it looks like they are taking advantage of the long delay until threads are deleted, so maybe the timing isn't a coincidence.
Click to expand...
Those seem to be coming when it is morning in Europe. Evening in Asia and people in US are asleep. I saw this same timing once on another forum: the spam downpour came during the US wee hours. I tried to read during my breaks at work and the breaks were instead spent reporting spam (often hundreds). Then I got spamfighter rights (i.e. could delete the excrement instead of just reporting it) and spent my breaks feeding the spam to my pet dragon (boy, Aidahar was getting fat).
 
Magically Clueless

Magically Clueless

Administrator
Staff member
Quirinea said:
(20 seconds between reports...???)
Click to expand...
Sorry, I meant to reply to this earlier. I was rooting around in the admin panel and I couldn't find anything about delay between reports, but I can look more. If I find something, I'll likely change it. That being said, we only need one report from the account (or the account itself) and all of them get removed, so it's okay if you don't report every spam thread. When we mark an account as spam, all the posts get removed and they get automatically banned.

I added more phrases to the spam filter and so far it's caught some spammers- yay! I'll try to add as many phrases as I can that are unlikely for normal members to trip on their own, but IF a normal member trips them, it's fine since moderators can view each post and the context (i.e. you don't get banned if you accidentally trip it). If there are phrases you think should be added, feel free to let me know.

edit: would probably help if I said what I added to the spam LOL

I added "abortion", "marijuana", and "whatsapp" to the filters which will likely catch a good chunk of the spam we've been getting, but I'm happy to add more if there are any big ones/patterns you've noticed and missed
 
Last edited:
Lew Zealand

Lew Zealand

Helper
Magically Clueless said:
Sorry, I meant to reply to this earlier. I was rooting around in the admin panel and I couldn't find anything about delay between reports, but I can look more. If I find something, I'll likely change it. That being said, we only need one report from the account (or the account itself) and all of them get removed, so it's okay if you don't report every spam thread. When we mark an account as spam, all the posts get removed and they get automatically banned.

I added more phrases to the spam filter and so far it's caught some spammers- yay! I'll try to add as many phrases as I can that are unlikely for normal members to trip on their own, but IF a normal member trips them, it's fine since moderators can view each post and the context (i.e. you don't get banned if you accidentally trip it). If there are phrases you think should be added, feel free to let me know.

edit: would probably help if I said what I added to the spam LOL

I added "abortion", "marijuana", and "whatsapp" to the filters which will likely catch a good chunk of the spam we've been getting, but I'm happy to add more if there are any big ones/patterns you've noticed and missed
Click to expand...
Thanks! :heart: :heart:

I usually scan the spams as I'm always interested in how people think and this includes spammers and their (mostly pitiful) social engineering techniques. If there are any other unique and distinctive words that it seems might not trip up legitimate posts here, it is OK if we suggest them to you in this thread? Or is there a better way to communicate that? I just don't want to be annoying. About this.

I'll still be annoying in all the other ways, hey I just gotta be me!
 
Magically Clueless

Magically Clueless

Administrator
Staff member
Lew Zealand said:
Thanks! :heart: :heart:

I usually scan the spams as I'm always interested in how people think and this includes spammers and their (mostly pitiful) social engineering techniques. If there are any other unique and distinctive words that it seems might not trip up legitimate posts here, it is OK if we suggest them to you in this thread? Or is there a better way to communicate that? I just don't want to be annoying. About this.

I'll still be annoying in all the other ways, hey I just gotta be me!
Click to expand...
This thread is fine, but I don't mind if you prefer to private message either. As long as I can add it, it's good! :thumbsup:
 
Odin

Odin

Moderator
Staff member
Hill Myna said:
@Pangaearocks, I leave a comment on the spammer's profile to let other people know that they're reported already. No need to spam the mods with spam reports! :D
Click to expand...
Don't worry about that! It doesn't actually spam us, if 10 people all report one thread, it's still just 1 reported "item" for us to review. We'll see everyone that reported it, but it's not actually any more clutter or anything.
 
Odin

Odin

Moderator
Staff member
I just wanted to give a quick update, as we had a new spam account this morning. They posted 12 spam threads, 4 of which were automatically removed. Obviously we'd like every spam thread to be auto-removed, and we're working towards that.
 
Lew Zealand

Lew Zealand

Helper
Odin said:
I just wanted to give a quick update, as we had a new spam account this morning. They posted 12 spam threads, 4 of which were automatically removed. Obviously we'd like every spam thread to be auto-removed, and we're working towards that.
Click to expand...
Sounds good, the more people that spam here the more that the system can be tuned.

Wait, is that a good thing or not?
 
Odin

Odin

Moderator
Staff member
Lew Zealand said:
Sounds good, the more people that spam here the more that the system can be tuned.

Wait, is that a good thing or not?
Click to expand...
Ideally we'd never get another spam account again, but I don't think that's going to happen. So yes, we're hoping to be able to improve the system over time and any future spam threads that don't get caught will help us improve.

Edit: We had another spam account post one thread a little while ago, which was automatically removed! It's good to see the system working. Obviously the problem isn't fully solved, but I'm going to mark this thread as "implemented" since the new system should help us with the original issue of spam threads remaining up for long periods.
 
Last edited:

Ereo

Helper
Magically Clueless said:
Sorry, I meant to reply to this earlier. I was rooting around in the admin panel and I couldn't find anything about delay between reports, but I can look more. If I find something, I'll likely change it. That being said, we only need one report from the account (or the account itself) and all of them get removed, so it's okay if you don't report every spam thread. When we mark an account as spam, all the posts get removed and they get automatically banned.

I added more phrases to the spam filter and so far it's caught some spammers- yay! I'll try to add as many phrases as I can that are unlikely for normal members to trip on their own, but IF a normal member trips them, it's fine since moderators can view each post and the context (i.e. you don't get banned if you accidentally trip it). If there are phrases you think should be added, feel free to let me know.

edit: would probably help if I said what I added to the spam LOL

I added "abortion", "marijuana", and "whatsapp" to the filters which will likely catch a good chunk of the spam we've been getting, but I'm happy to add more if there are any big ones/patterns you've noticed and missed
Click to expand...
I think the word "pill" or "pills" also comes up quite often with the spam accounts.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top