posting links limit

[joed]

Is it possible to restrict the posting of links to persons with 10 or 20 posts minimum? This would prevent the spammers with no posts from putting up their links.

[junkcollector]

Good Idea Joe!:smile2:

It has my support, If it is possible.:beerglass:

[Mr T]

What about a moderation mode for new users till they get a few legit posts in (such as 3 or 5)... or even lift it after they make 1 legit post. Most spammers have no clue about anything on here anyways.. they'd never make it.. Half the time its a automated "bot" that is scanning for a bulletin board that it knows how to post to.

it wont stop any legit user from posting on the board. We have moderators on here (somewhere :vroam:) It only takes a few seconds to look at a post and click the approve button. Heck, I'm on here daily, i'll even volunteer to help with it. It's not like we are getting 100 new users a day on here....

Again, if it's a bot posting the message, blocking a link wont change a thing.. the link will still be on the page, just as non-clickable text... they will still be able to spam.

[suemarkp]

Both are good sugestions. We could also have the user enter what text he sees in an image. Most bots can't recognize characters in a JEPG, yet.

[Mr T]

Typing in letters/numbers gets to be a big pain after a while. Ontop of trying to figure out if that is a O or a 0. or a l or a 1 or a p or a P. Maybe require it only in the lowest userclass untill they become a valid member with a few posts made.

[DUNBAR PLUMBER]

Both are good sugestions. We could also have the user enter what text he sees in an image. Most bots can't recognize characters in a JEPG, yet.




Better yet, retype a word that best fits a random question. I see that format on a site I belong to that works quite well and stops script bots real quick.


I seem to do a lot of behind the scenes moderating on this site lately due to the influx of spam so often here.

I seem to catch it by chance before the other mods catch it sometimes which doesn't bother me at all.......but I do know that this constant hammering of the site indirectly kills member participation and aggravates the current members in the normal activity.

I posted some really good remedies to this problem that will work.....in regards to spamming.

This same sort of thing literally killed stemdoctor.com

As far as I know.....the owner of that site has decided to not have a forum anymore as a result of how much trouble he had with spamming. Vbulletin has software patches to stop this, along with visual confirmation.

Disabling html won't stop these bots; it'll just show the huge html code all written out......still causing a problem.

They're coming here soley because of keywording......one example was that one post in regards to finding out who it was on a missed call in the telephone forum.

Certain words like any forum was how that came about. Anyone can keyword into a search engine and draw a 100 pages of content, then set the parameters to follow Vbulletin software vulnerabilities and push the go button.....the rest is basically auto pilot and they don't care if they get banned or not. It's not human so it doesn't know or have feelings.

For every 1 that gets banned or removed, one or two remain somewhere on an unkept forum, the web crawlers scour these sites for info since they are so much in competition with each other to have the most.....then it logs into a search engine return.


Someone looking for product, keywords a general term or termage, search engines yields results and either finds the product link or site it was put in.

Sometimes that is a good thing, sometimes that's a horrible thing.

#6 #7 (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=www.selfhelpforums.com+nokia&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-501&xargs=0&pstart=1&b=1) < These are still live linking to this site, thus the reason it shadows and brings "other" bots to this site knowing it's an open channel that allows scripting.

It's one big advertising machine that has more ins and outs than all of us combined can even fathom. Internet is big business and getting product to show up in your face on keywording search engines is what and why they are doing it.

[joed]

I don't understand the reason why the spam posts are not deleted and only moved. Can someone explain that.

[junkcollector]

One concern I had is that sometimes people who come here to ask a question post a link to an online photo album they have. Sometimes they take photos that help us answer their question.

The argument to that is you can upload just about anything (pictures, drawings, PDFs,) right on the forum, thus eliminating the need for anyone with only a few posts to put up a link. If one accumulates 5 to 10 posts they are most likely a legitimate poster, (I know some spammers put like 20 bogus posts on here before) But it is usually rare.

Good Ideas so far guys.

[Mr T]

Spam posts are kept as "evidence" If you have access to the top secret spam room there are 7-8 pages of posts in there as of last check. (you can also click on the "spam posts" heading to go to that catagory then select "mark forum read" under thread tools (i think) to make them disapear.

I think linking should still be allowed (to confirmed valid users) Copying a address for a image then posting it on here using the "insert image" button is also linking. I think blocking links may block use of that too.

Don if you are out there, about how many new users do we get in a week/month/day? Do you have any (easy to obtain) stats on how many users in the userbase have less then 5 posts? I still think moderating posts till a user makes a few "valid" posts then giving them full access is the way to go. The people validating (I do volunteer) would always have the option to instantly validate them if there's no doubt in their first post they are a valid user. (Hopefully that option physically exists)

Just a few more cents....

[joed]

I can see the spam posts. I just don't know why we keep them. Why do we need them as evidence?

[dkerr]

Yes I still do exist at least physically.

The orginally thought of moving spam posts to a special forum that only certain people can actually see (which is ones with if I remember right over 500 posts to their credit), so the actual spammers won't see human or not. And most of the people that are askign questions will not as they are here past a few posts.

My orginal intentions was to try and track where most of it was coming from but that can also be deceiving as you can proxy your websurfing to make it look like you are coming from nigeria and in actual fact it could be coming from your next door neighbour.

Forcing to moderation every post which means no-one except moderators/administrators could see it until the post was approved is sort of a pain, a qualifying perpson would have to first approve it before anyone could see or reply to the question. Plus some out there have difficulty for some unknown reason in just figureing out how to post question.

If you have not already noticed our overall daily visitors have gone up tremendously over the last couple of months (must be doing something right). Along with this additional spam, I think it is par for the course, the more popular you get the more of the undesirables come with the territory. There is really no easy answer no matter which direction you take. Perhaps having more of the regulars designated as moderators may help in getting a hold on it and deleting any spam that shows quicker.

[joed]

I have never been a moderator at a forum but I would be willing to help out.