Method of decreasing spam

Why do you take things so personally?

Calm down and take a breather.
I don't take it personal, unless it's from you. But that's another story.

It wasn't personal, he just added nothing to the discussion what so ever. Seems as if he came in just to scold and leave.
Probably just so this whole idea of David actually having do implement something like this would dissipate.
 
I don't take it personal, unless it's from you. But that's another story.

It wasn't personal, he just added nothing to the discussion what so ever. Seems as if he came in just to scold and leave.
Probably just so this whole idea of David actually having do implement something like this would dissipate.

What? That doesn't make sense...


Message2Short
 
I don't take it personal, unless it's from you. But that's another story.

Seems different to me...

Either way, the only proven way to prevent spam while not preventing legit members from getting in is the CAPTCHA which is already in use. The problem is most bots are created and joined by humans. There is no way to to guess/prevent a human from getting in and unleashing a bot.
 
captchas, don't work. (what's in the fuzy image)
soundbites don't work (what's in the fuzzy soundbite)
maths questions don't work. (what's the word for two plus two)
awareness questions don't work (how many letters in computerforums)
what's the picture questions don't work (what's this cat/dog)

the reason that they don't work is that most places it's not the spam bots signing up any more, it's people signing up then letting the bot take the account.
(ok sometimes it's spam bots), but basically if the operator takes five minutes to create an account they can let their bot run loose for ages).

if you have to make a minimum number of posts as replies before you can start a thread, ten all we'll see is spam in replies rather than their own threads, (we see this anyway).

we'll also see a lot of new members saying hello in random places, or contributing very little to threads just so that they can make their own thread to ask for help. -i.e we'll think that all new members are spammers because their first ten posts will likely be largely useless.

the long and the short of it is this,
people make money from spam. it' easy, people like making money, people like doing things the easy way, spam won't stop.

as well as people liking to make money from spam because it's easy, people like it to be easy to sign up to forums.

if you make it too hard to sign up to a forum, people won't bother.

if you make it so that you have to make a lot of posts before you can ask a question, people won't bother and will go elsewhere.

if you make it so that you have to be here a certain amount of time before you can post people won't bother and will go elsewhere.

if you make it so people can't post right away and their account needs to be approved, people won't bother and will go elsewhere.
(mostly, but not always, I am a member of a forum where you aren't allowed to sign up without sending the administrator a message first, it's a long process, the only reason that I signed up there is because it was the best forum for the need and the questions that I needed to ask -in that case it was regarding classic cars restoration).

the easiest way to stop spam is to make all account paid for accounts, if you pay for an account then spammers won't see a return on their investment, but we also won't see a whole lot of new members.


the long and the short of it is, you can't stop spam, you can only clean it up/ban accounts/ban IP addresses or ranges.

and yes, we do have a lot of mods, more mods might help. -in fact I think that this is one of the only viable solutions offered in the thread.

but there can only be so many mods.


the only other thing that I can think of would be disallowing linking pictures, or dis allowing certain web sites with the language filters... but realistically, that just makes it harder for genuine members
 
More mods could help yes, but that has not been the only good idea.
For example, the idea of having a certain number of users until a post is temporarily removed until a mod removes or reinstates it.

I fail to see how you believe a computer can tell the difference between a cat and a dog.
Maybe if the pictures are not alike and/or very common. The best filtering for images I have seen are porn filters and they still only work 40% of the time.

Also, the link / images idea would not allow the link to display in plain text, it would remove all images / links.
This would not trip the bot in to believe they are blocked unless the bot rereads it's post.

If anyone believes this would be hard to implements, think regular expressions.
 
For example, the idea of having a certain number of users until a post is temporarily removed until a mod removes or reinstates it.
I missed that one...
but I guess what you're saying is that if ten people click a reported post that it should disappear from the forum? or at least be moved to a moderation queue ready for the mods of David to either approve or disapprove?

that's all well and good, but...

do ten people actually report posts? no, usually not, sometimes we get multiple reports for a single bit of spam, but usually it'd be cleared by the time it's been reported a few times.

(I'm assuming that you mean ten individual users have to report the post).

then what happens? is that one post taken away? very good if it's just a regular member who's posted something inappropriate, but useless for dealing with spammers who are posting loads.

or do all their posts get moderated? great for getting rid of all the spam from a single account, but very bad if a member has made one inappropriate comment, or gotten into a bit of a 'heated debate'.
 
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