Method of decreasing spam

I fail to see how you believe a computer can tell the difference between a cat and a dog.

Because as I've said, and Root said, it's usually people signing up to get around the pictures/sounds then once the account is registered unleashing the bot.
 
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'.

Who said ten people would have to report it?
I was thinking more along the lines of 3.
This feature would not be used for normal returning members. Only new members would be under this watch. (under say ~30-40 posts)

Because as I've said, and Root said, it's usually people signing up to get around the pictures/sounds then once the account is registered unleashing the bot.
Thus the reason you implement multiple algorithms for stopping spam...
The picture captcha is only one of them. This would stop actual bots not human "leashed" bots if you will.

You guys are so defensive, you'd think we were trying to take your job/title away from you guys. If anything we are trying to make your jobs easier and our forum experience better.
Instead of coming up with many ways a particular captcha system will not work why not try and come up with new ones?
 
You guys are so defensive, you'd think we were trying to take your job/title away from you guys. If anything we are trying to make your jobs easier and our forum experience better.

Defensive? No. We just know what we are really dealing with. Most of the spam we get now is generated by humans registering then botting their account. Algorithms would not stop that.
 
Defensive? No. We just know what we are really dealing with. Most of the spam we get now is generated by humans registering then botting their account. Algorithms would not stop that.

All the more reason we should implement a post count rule as described in prior threads. Why are you so against implementing something like this? If it COULD help then why not? Do you realize you what you are arguing for?
 
All the more reason we should implement a post count rule as described in prior threads. Why are you so against implementing something like this? If it COULD help then why not? Do you realize you what you are arguing for?

Because it would annoy people (like me) who are here legitimately to have to go thru loops and bounds just to prove I am actually here with good intentions. Things like that turn people away.

Yes, I am well aware of what I am arguing for as it's my job here to clean up the spam. That said, I'd rather make it easy for people to join and post to get help (with pictures, links and freedom to post where needed) and deal with the little bit of extra spam. I feel this way because I know that I would never have joined here if I had to post x number of times to actually get the help I needed.

If you would like, I can make you a moderated member and you can see for yourself what it'd be like for these potential new people if we implement it. I'd set it for two weeks to give you a small feel for it.
 
Defensive? No. We just know what we are really dealing with. Most of the spam we get now is generated by humans registering then botting their account. Algorithms would not stop that.
Here's an idea of an algorithm that might, kind of like the above but a bit different.

Say just 3 users with (for instance) over 5 bars of rep reported something as spam. If the user has, say <5 posts that account could then be temporarily disabled and the post temporarily removed until a mod can come in and assess the situation. If the user has >5 posts then the post could just be temporarily removed but the account left open (since it's more likely it's a heated comment if it's a user with more posts.)

Either that, or we have separate a separate checkbox in the report form to say if something's spam or just objectional content.

If anyone is found to be abusing the automated system (though hopefully the high rep barrier would significantly decrease this) then they could simply be blocked from having any impact.

All of the numbers I've given are approximate, it's more the idea. I'm not trying to push that through as the best thing out there - I'm well aware such a thing would be time consuming to implement and would require a fair bit of tweaking before it was as effective as possible. From an objective viewpoint though I do think an algorithm like that would work pretty well. It shouldn't turn people away because any legitimate posts would most likely never be caught - even if they are from brand new members.

It's just up to the mods / David whether such a thing is implemented - fair play whatever they choose, I'm not here to attempt to force anything through the system :)
 
Because it would annoy people (like me) who are here legitimately to have to go thru loops and bounds just to prove I am actually here with good intentions. Things like that turn people away.

Yes, I am well aware of what I am arguing for as it's my job here to clean up the spam. That said, I'd rather make it easy for people to join and post to get help (with pictures, links and freedom to post where needed) and deal with the little bit of extra spam. I feel this way because I know that I would never have joined here if I had to post x number of times to actually get the help I needed.

If you would like, I can make you a moderated member and you can see for yourself what it'd be like for these potential new people if we implement it. I'd set it for two weeks to give you a small feel for it.
I mean no disrespect to any of you, Root, you Celegorm, or AR in this discussion by the way. I respect the fact that you take time out of your lives to not only contribute your opinions to the forum but moderate it as well.

I don't need to see the amount of spam and crap you guys have to deal with I can imagine it being quite a bit.
I just think that some of these would help, with out that much of a hassle to the user at all. Such as berry's suggestion.
 
I like berry's idea, but there's still "time consuming to implement and would require a fair bit of tweaking". I'm with AR, Celegorm, and Root on the "post rule". I have joined some overclocking forums that are around, but I didn't actually stick at any because I'm always needing a certain amount of posts to do something; it's rather annoying. The easiest and most logical solution is just to add moderators. You take members with a good balance of activity and responsibility and you give them the ban hammer. All issues would be solved. You'd still have spam, but it wouldn't last that long. All ideas listed in this thread may work up to a certain period then people would find a way around it. The ban hammer, on the other hand, never fails.
 
Who said ten people would have to report it?
I was thinking more along the lines of 3.
This feature would not be used for normal returning members. Only new members would be under this watch. (under say ~30-40 posts)
so it does nothing to help when existing members get involved in flame wars?

I just picked a number, that number was ten,

it just occurs to me that if you set the number too high, then you'll never have enough reports to make the posts invisible, if you set the number too low, ,you leave the system far too open to abuse.

when you say normal members, isn't the space between newbie and normal member only something like 30 posts?

so a bot has to be loose for all of a second before this member moderation method won't work?

or are you thinking new members like after a few weeks people come off this moderated list? this is quite a lot of work... I mean you;re asking David to write custom addins for the forum for a method that personally I don't think would even work!

Thus the reason you implement multiple algorithms for stopping spam...
The picture captcha is only one of them. This would stop actual bots not human "leashed" bots if you will.
Right...

lets say that there are no turin checks on sign up,
now bots can just sign themselves up and produce spam...

the fix for this is to implement a turin test, like a captcha.

now what happens is that bots can't automatically sign themselves up...
so people sign up and then give the accounts to bots.

there are no more sign up checks that could be implemented,
because it's not computers that are signing up, it's people...

a secondary effect of having too many tests at sign up is that it takes too long to sign up, it's too complicated to sign up it's confusing. so no new people sign up.

so the only new members we'd see are spam accounts?
You guys are so defensive, you'd think we were trying to take your job/title away from you guys. If anything we are trying to make your jobs easier and our forum experience better.
Instead of coming up with many ways a particular captcha system will not work why not try and come up with new ones?

it doesn't matter what captch system you try to put in place, a simple fuzzy text captcha is actually enough, it's not machines that are signing up it's people.

it doesn't matter how good or how bad a captcha system is, because it's not machines that actually sign up.

we don't need to come up with new captcha systems, remember anything that makes it more difficult to sign up means less people will actually sign up.

so far as making the job easier, it won't there would still be just as many people signing up, and handing their accounts to spam machines.
as far as the title of mod goes, it's an honour to be a mod, but I wouldn't be crying myself to sleep if the title was taken away.


All the more reason we should implement a post count rule as described in prior threads. Why are you so against implementing something like this? If it COULD help then why not? Do you realize you what you are arguing for?
perhaps you could explain exactly how this system would work?
at the moment I probably don't understand it, it just sounds like an awful lot of work for little or no return.
in case you hadn't noticed we've already seem bots look like they try to get around these systems:
we see bots that post several vaguely trying to look helpful posts before start posting spam
i.e the bots look like they are normal members before posting spam -so they may already be taken off the moderation list.

another thing that we see if that some accounts posting spam are not new accounts, basically it's like a person is signing up an account then leaving it for a while before it starts spamming,
i.e they may already be taken off this moderation list before they start posting...


the trouble isn't that we're all really really defensive about our forum jobs, it's just the ideas put forward just aren't good ones.

this new member moderation if a few people report post then they could disappear, but if their approved old members, or regular members, (in a way that I'm not sure how you've defined it), then their posts won't disappear??

it's take a long time to implement that, and as I've already said above, we already see bot behaviour that'd get around it.

all other ideas seem to revolve around making the sign up process harder.
but that's ignoring the fact that many people won't sign up to a place if it's too difficult, (especially not whilst there are hundreds of other computer forums on the internet).


Say just 3 users with (for instance) over 5 bars of rep reported something as spam. If the user has, say <5 posts that account could then be temporarily disabled and the post temporarily removed until a mod can come in and assess the situation. If the user has >5 posts then the post could just be temporarily removed but the account left open (since it's more likely it's a heated comment if it's a user with more posts.)
OK, I like that you're saying that the rep bars need to come into play, it's not particularly easy to accumulate rep, so this is quite a cool way of trying to cut down abuse.

I know that the numbers are only vague ideas... but it's pretty easy to get to five posts, then the system won't work again...


again, for me this really comes down to doing days and possible weeks of coding, testing, implementing, for a system that in the end seems pretty trivial to get around, (just make a few good posts and your account is safe), then let loose with the spam.
 
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