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Regarding Cleanup of Spam Messages

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Regarding Cleanup of Spam Messages

Postby Mesti Arcanus » Thu May 10, 2007 4:07 am

Now, I realize that the amount of spam we get in our public area is attrocious, and we're working on cleaning it up as soon as we see it. If the other admins (namely Kevin, who it appears is kinda running the show right now) think I'm overstepping my bounds on this, feel free to smack me back into place. But it's getting to the point where I can't stand going into our public OT forum, and I only do it to clean out the spam. Quite frankly, that leads me to the question of what kind of message do we send to visitors when our own members don't want to check that section of the forum? So, a couple things I've noticed that I thought should be brought up:

1) When taking out links/messages of a less than ideal nature, alot of the threads are left sitting in the forum. This has led to the public access OT forum consisting of a massive amount of useless threads, meaning actually finding anything worthwhile is becoming akin to searching for a needle in a haystack.

2) Apparently, when these messages are being cleaned up, some of the users aren't getting their IPs banned/accounts deleted/etc. Since there aren't many of us with admin capabilities, I'm guessing that what's happening is officers are toasting the posts, but not the users (since they can't).

3) Almost every one of these threads that requires "special attention" has a handful of replies to it, most along the lines of "OMG BANZOR TEH BOT!!!1!one!!2!!!eleventyone!" which, while occasionally of a humourous nature, is usually a waste of the poster's and reader's time.

So I'd like to propose the following procedures for the future regarding the plague of spam in the public section. First, when taking care of these threads, just delete them completely once the IPs have been banned, user deleted, etc. Now, since the bulk of the officers can't actually perform IP bans and such, in their case they should clean up the post and tag the thread with something to let the next admin in know that there still needs to be banning, and once the admin has finished taking care of the thread, they can delete it (unless of course there's something funny/interesting worth keeping around, like Theo's pic... ain't he so cute :D). Lastly, unless you've actually got something original and funny to say, don't waste everyone's time by replying to the threads. After all, it's just going to end up getting deleted. With that in mind, I'm going to take a stretch of time, likely tomorrow, and clean out all the leftover threads. Then I have to clean my place up to, because it's starting to look nearly as bad as the forum. :P
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Postby EmptySea » Thu May 10, 2007 12:09 pm

Last night I turned on the option where a new user has to verify the forum account by email. I know this may turn away some possible members, but it needs to be done. It should deal with half of the bot's that get in. It will also bring to light he fact that we also have human spammers. There really is no way to "stop" that kind of spam, but in doing this, should lower the overall number of spam messages we receive.
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Postby Sciros » Thu May 10, 2007 1:28 pm

Plus you can specify what email addresses you don't want to see under Ban Control in the admin panel. That should give you another line of defense. Whenever we get another bot on our forum, I delete the conversation and user and ban the email (usually a whole range).
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Postby Bentwillow » Thu May 10, 2007 3:05 pm

When I ban a spammer...I always go back and delete the thread.
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Postby Dmitri » Thu May 10, 2007 5:22 pm

This is an endless battle, really, until you'll make it so that they'll be unable to register or leave links within their first 1-2 posts. I've been having that issue in vB 3.6.3 and the only thing which has solved it is the install of the anti-spam plugins. Unfortunately, I'm not sure how it's done in phpBB, since I've always been running my board using vBulletin's engine.
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Postby Aravis » Thu May 10, 2007 5:33 pm

I just thought I would add that the option Empty Sea is talking about is very helpful for our forums. I have enabled the "approval by admin" option for anyone registering on our forums and we have yet to have any spammers or anything of that nature. I really hope that it helps you guys out (but that would mean that all bets are off on what spammage will happen next :roll: )
Anyway - it does seem to have helped us so maybe it will help you also to have to approve the forum member before they can even post. However, it may mean more work for the admins - we are small so it really isn't much extra work for me to approve people who join - hopefully it will help more than anything. :wink:
(But keep those pics of Theo coming!!)
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Postby Dmitri » Thu May 10, 2007 5:36 pm

The approval by admins option really sucks imho, since it's the same as manually deleting every post the bots make.
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Postby Uca Firewind » Thu May 10, 2007 5:53 pm

It's a lot of work, yes, but it saves from having the spam posted. And considering some bots post pictures, and some allied guilds have children, I understand why they have that option selected.
Here at ZoS, considering how many legit people register on a daily basis, that may be a bad idea. But it may come to that.
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Postby Melissa Keyis » Thu May 10, 2007 8:01 pm

I am going to try to add a thing when you register to have to answer something like this what is 1+2 then you must answer "3" or "three"

Also is everyone cool with me deleting the current spam threads. It will delete the OMG u are so banned posts as well but it will make the section much cleaner.
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Postby Killian » Thu May 10, 2007 9:33 pm

I know I am not in your Guild or alliance, but we had the dame problem. We used the "approval by admin" and it worked for the posts. The problems were that we never knew who was a real person that wanted to know about our guild. The other was that they could still join and have a porn site listed on the member list. I have a son and do not want him to see any of that crap. So I delete any members that have anything to do with porn. I removed the "approval by admin" for new members. Now I just look at every new members profile and remove them asap if needed. The other admins and mods help with the work.

Sorry if I am out of place, I just hate porn bots!!!!
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Postby Hells » Thu May 10, 2007 9:42 pm

ike this what is 1+2 then you must answer "3" or "three"

Its not 12? :oops:
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Postby EmptySea » Thu May 10, 2007 11:35 pm

Delete the old posts. As for the question, there are a few things to watch out for. Jut make sure to really research it as if you were trying to hack through it and not as looking for something to block spam.

Everything I have found like this is a .mod file and I have no clue how to implement that.
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Postby EmptySea » Sun May 13, 2007 5:44 am

wtf happened to my daily incoming porn links? I'm so bored now, lol. Seems we finally got a handle on the spam.
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Postby Mesti Arcanus » Sun May 13, 2007 6:15 am

Yeah, I noticed the same thing. Awesome job!

Now I can go back to using the emoticons in weird ways. But first, I'm kinda hungry... I think I'm going to go have some :spam .
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Postby Bentwillow » Sun May 13, 2007 11:29 am

I like this : :spam very funny Mesti lol
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