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 Author: Stellar View Messages Posted By Stellar
 Posted: May 19, 2023 10:24
 Subject: Re: Ridiculous amounts of spam on forum
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In Off Topic, SylvainLS writes:
  In Off Topic, WhiteHorseMatt writes:
  […]
  Silver lining: (most) forum regulars have now learned how to report posts

It would be easier if there were a report post option along with View/Cancel/Reply
on the forum rather than having to go through the problem centre and dig out
the message number.

Yes.


  It's easier to just ignore the spam and move on rather than report the user.

This depends on your default settings: with ‘Compact’ or ‘Brief’, the spam
is easy to ignore, with ‘All’ or ‘Full’ you’ll see them… but then I’m not sure
there’s people reading the forum like that

I do, but probably not many more...
 Author: SylvainLS View Messages Posted By SylvainLS
 Posted: May 19, 2023 08:20
 Subject: Re: Ridiculous amounts of spam on forum
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In Off Topic, WhiteHorseMatt writes:
  […]
  Silver lining: (most) forum regulars have now learned how to report posts

It would be easier if there were a report post option along with View/Cancel/Reply
on the forum rather than having to go through the problem centre and dig out
the message number.

Yes.


  It's easier to just ignore the spam and move on rather than report the user.

This depends on your default settings: with ‘Compact’ or ‘Brief’, the spam
is easy to ignore, with ‘All’ or ‘Full’ you’ll see them… but then I’m not sure
there’s people reading the forum like that
 Author: peregrinator View Messages Posted By peregrinator
 Posted: May 19, 2023 07:01
 Subject: Re: Ridiculous amounts of spam on forum
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In Off Topic, SylvainLS writes:
  In Off Topic, Ziegelmeister writes:
  Rationalize it all you want.

Just.

Fix.

It.

FYI, discussions moderators are members, like you.
If if there were a technical solution (which there isn’t), neither Roo nor I
nor the others mods can change the forum’s code.

I'm going to go against the grain here and say that while the spam is annoying,
it's not something that I think is a critical issue. I see 1-2 spam messages
per day, they're obvious spam, I can just scroll on by. Compared to the amount
of spam I see in my emails every day, this is nothing.
 Author: WhiteHorseMatt View Messages Posted By WhiteHorseMatt
 Posted: May 19, 2023 06:50
 Subject: Re: Ridiculous amounts of spam on forum
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In Off Topic, SylvainLS writes:
  In Off Topic, Chickaroo writes:
  […]
Most other forums I’ve ever been a member of suffer from similar problems

+1

Hmm, there used to be a “Why your antispam idea won’t work” checklist for e-mail. 
We need one for forums
So, to answer a few suggestions:

— Preventing newbies from asking questions on the forum is not very welcoming,
is it?
— Limiting newbies’ number of posts: most spammers only post once per account
anyway.
— The two previous ideas are worse when “newbie” is defined by feedback instead
of time.
— Captcha: most spammers here are human.
— Location filtering: nope, won’t do.
— Keyword filtering: I want to be able to talk about gummy bears and the new
Ford Escort set!


Silver lining: (most) forum regulars have now learned how to report posts

It would be easier if there were a report post option along with View/Cancel/Reply
on the forum rather than having to go through the problem centre and dig out
the message number.

It's easier to just ignore the spam and move on rather than report the user.
 Author: SylvainLS View Messages Posted By SylvainLS
 Posted: May 19, 2023 05:14
 Subject: Re: Ridiculous amounts of spam on forum
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In Off Topic, Ziegelmeister writes:
  Rationalize it all you want.

Just.

Fix.

It.

FYI, discussions moderators are members, like you.
If if there were a technical solution (which there isn’t), neither Roo nor I
nor the others mods can change the forum’s code.
 Author: Ziegelmeister View Messages Posted By Ziegelmeister
 Posted: May 19, 2023 05:05
 Subject: Re: Ridiculous amounts of spam on forum
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Rationalize it all you want.

Just.

Fix.

It.
 Author: SylvainLS View Messages Posted By SylvainLS
 Posted: May 19, 2023 03:10
 Subject: Re: Ridiculous amounts of spam on forum
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In Off Topic, Chickaroo writes:
  […]
Most other forums I’ve ever been a member of suffer from similar problems

+1

Hmm, there used to be a “Why your antispam idea won’t work” checklist for e-mail. 
We need one for forums
So, to answer a few suggestions:

— Preventing newbies from asking questions on the forum is not very welcoming,
is it?
— Limiting newbies’ number of posts: most spammers only post once per account
anyway.
— The two previous ideas are worse when “newbie” is defined by feedback instead
of time.
— Captcha: most spammers here are human.
— Location filtering: nope, won’t do.
— Keyword filtering: I want to be able to talk about gummy bears and the new
Ford Escort set!


Silver lining: (most) forum regulars have now learned how to report posts
 Author: Nubs_Select View Messages Posted By Nubs_Select
 Posted: May 19, 2023 02:20
 Subject: Re: Ridiculous amounts of spam on forum
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  I think there’s more chance of people being convinced to buy pizza than these
spam posts working

Roo

 Author: Chickaroo View Messages Posted By Chickaroo
 Posted: May 19, 2023 02:03
 Subject: Re: Ridiculous amounts of spam on forum
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In Off Topic, BricksOfFaith writes:
  Anybody know why there has been so many spam messages/scams on the forum the
past few months? It’s getting kinda irritating….

Most other forums I’ve ever been a member of suffer from similar problems
Unfortunately any website which features on search engines is prone to spam (I
think way back BrickLink never used to show up on Google - something to do with
spiders?)
I think there’s more chance of people being convinced to buy pizza than these
spam posts working

Roo
 Author: ghyde View Messages Posted By ghyde
 Posted: May 19, 2023 01:49
 Subject: Re: Ridiculous amounts of spam on forum
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In Off Topic, BricksOfFaith writes:
  Anybody know why there has been so many spam messages/scams on the forum the
past few months? It’s getting kinda irritating….

It's because BrickLink admins can't or won't implement a keyword
scanning system for new posts that trigger on any spam keywords, and block them,
instead of letting them get posted.

BrickLink admins have to stop making it so easy to post spam messages, if there
is an automatic filter that drops spam posts in the system's equivalent of
/dev/null then spammers will continue to spam the forums with spam posts.

BrickLink will only keep getting spammers until they make it impossible for spam
messages to be visible. The way to do that is what I outlined above.

They have to stop the spam from getting posted to the forums in the first place,
or it's just going to keep happening.

Just my 2c worth ...

Cheers ...

ghyde

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