Forumrules need a change

[manstan]

Well the spammers have been hitting us hard here lately. Time to make it 10 posts before you can make a thread.
Other thoughts on this issue?

[Brandon_Blackbird]

Nah, I'm having fun with it. Make my post and report and move on. If I'm lucky I'll get a laugh. Plus having a post restriction will hurt the true newbies who just want to come here to ask one question.

Turbine just needs to up the "are you human?" difficulty on the registration page.

[Dotlbeme]

Not sure what your beef is, can you be more specific? I do not see any rash of newbie thread starters at least in General.

[Brandon_Blackbird]

Not sure what your beef is, can you be more specific? I do not see any rash of newbie thread starters at least in General.

They mostly post in tech support.

[Eldarian_Grace]

Not sure what your beef is, can you be more specific? I do not see any rash of newbie thread starters at least in General.

Not quite, they want to sacrifice the ability of a genuine newbie to ask a question straight away for the ability to prevent these botted spams. Its not a good compromise IMO, especially as human behind bot will just program for existing threads to be spammed, which would be worse.

[whheydt]

Not sure what your beef is, can you be more specific? I do not see any rash of newbie thread starters at least in General.

I believe he's referring to the streaming (or should I say "steaming", as in "pile of steaming..."?) sports links posts that we've had a rash of lately.

[Dotlbeme]

I believe he's referring to the streaming (or should I say "steaming", as in "pile of steaming..."?) sports links posts that we've had a rash of lately.

Kay, been off for a bit, hadn't noticed. Nothing like a Cleveland Steamer...

[Damojo]

Yup I'd like to see an end to the spammers, weekend sock-puppet accounts and the rest of the nonsense, but penalising new players isn't the way to go.
Report, move on, let the mods deal with it.

[melyjely]

I'm not sure what's more annoying. The spam postings, or the people who keep bumping them.

[Felajarko]

I'm not sure what's more annoying. The spam postings, or the people who keep bumping those threads to inform an automated spam bot that they've been reported.

Its not to let the spammers know, its to let the rest of the community know.

[Nymphonic]

I got a spam PM today asking me to subscribe to a paid credit check service.

[Sapience]

Yup I'd like to see an end to the spammers, weekend sock-puppet accounts and the rest of the nonsense, but penalising new players isn't the way to go.
Report, move on, let the mods deal with it.

This is the delema we face on a regular basis. We can certainly make it virtually impossible for people to make spammer accounts or sock puppet accounts. Both are completely against the community guidelines so there's no issue with banning these accounts. The problem lies with legit new players who came to ask valid questions. Locking them out of the forums, or restricting them too much becomes counter productive.

I'm not sure what's more annoying. The spam postings, or the people who keep bumping them.

I'd encourage everyone to NOT post in those threads and simply report them.

[Brandon_Blackbird]

I'd encourage everyone to NOT post in those threads and simply report them.

*siiiigh* Party pooper. Fine, I'll restrain myself from now on.

[SouthernBelle0927]

They all seem to be coming from one particular website, based on hovering over their links. I won't give the website a mention here, but it might be helpful for Sapience or someone else to send a nasty-nice letter to the appropriate contact there as well as help to create a filter that keeps the posts from making it to the board in the first place.

I used to admin/moderate a band fan-site forum--this kind of stuff was the bane of my existence and required a creative approach to keep under control.

If it's a SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) that someone has employed to get their brand noticed, the client needs to fire them for wasting their money on inappropriate targets. We don't have time to watch streaming sports videos--we have hobbits to escort to Isengard!!!!

[Bobby_Crocker]

A few other boards I subscribe to don't have restrictions on when you can start a new thread, but they do have a minimum post count required before you can post links. Not sure if that's possible, and if it is if that would cut down on the link spam threads or not. But something to consider at least I think.

as far as ...

<...>

I'd encourage everyone to NOT post in those threads and simply report them.

So my Aragorn-impersonating Nigerian 419 e-mail reply wasn't appreciated? <sob>

[whheydt]

This is the delema we face on a regular basis. We can certainly make it virtually impossible for people to make spammer accounts or sock puppet accounts. Both are completely against the community guidelines so there's no issue with banning these accounts. The problem lies with legit new players who came to ask valid questions. Locking them out of the forums, or restricting them too much becomes counter productive.

Understood and I appreciate the efforts you go through to maintain the Forums in a reasonable state. The idea of restricting N posts, for some small value of N, from posting links (and probably images as well) might have some merit as that would permit genuine new players to post questions and still act to restrict fly by spammers.

I'd encourage everyone to NOT post in those threads and simply report them.

I think a *single* followup to let others know that a report has already been filed should be considered tolerable.

*siiiigh* Party pooper. Fine, I'll restrain myself from now on.

Just make sure it's the first ("This has been reported") post and we can all get a chuckle out of your efforts.

[Sapience]

I think a *single* followup to let others know that a report has already been filed should be considered tolerable.

Fair enough, though what I'm really trying to do is make sure these kinds of threads don't pop back up on the "new posts" lists in the event we can't kill them quick enough. The more often they appears as "new" the more likely people will click/read/respond.

[PoeticNightmare]

I really don't think even a single "reported" post should be encouraged. If you see the thread, report it and move on. Keeping it on the new posts only creates more opportunities for people to look and possibly click on links in the post. I think that risk outweighs the possibility of too many reports being sent in. The more that these posts are ignored, the less they'll appear as the company running them will see there is potential to get anyone.

[Tarmuar]

I really don't think even a single "reported" post should be encouraged. If you see the thread, report it and move on. Keeping it on the new posts only creates more opportunities for people to look and possibly click on links in the post. I think that risk outweighs the possibility of too many reports being sent in. The more that these posts are ignored, the less they'll appear as the company running them will see there is potential to get anyone.

The problem is these are pretty much automated and to the company posting them the time it takes to run the script is so minute it doesn't mean anything one way or another. I would not doubt that if they found some way to completely block them that the culprits won't even take the time to take this forum off the list, figuring that someday something might change and they will automatically get back in again.

[PoeticNightmare]

The problem is these are pretty much automated and to the company posting them the time it takes to run the script is so minute it doesn't mean anything one way or another. I would not doubt that if they found some way to completely block them that the culprits won't even take the time to take this forum off the list, figuring that someday something might change and they will automatically get back in again.

Yeah good point. But, that's exactly why we should just keep them as 0 posts to let the thread move quickly behind all of the others, as soon as possible.

[Celebrawn]

I've lost all context as to what "spam" means anymore. Its definition has slowly broadened to be almost all-encompassing, and the word is thrown around as liberally as the word "the". I believe it is now something that one person finds annoying, so it must be stopped. Is that pretty close? Goes along with the culture at large I guess. I think from here on I will only acknowledge that word in reference to the meat product, which I also can't stand, funny enough.

[Sapience]

I've lost all context as to what "spam" means anymore. Its definition has slowly broadened to be almost all-encompassing, and the word is thrown around as liberally as the word "the". I believe it is now something that one person finds annoying, so it must be stopped. Is that pretty close? Goes along with the culture at large I guess. I think from here on I will only acknowledge that word in reference to the meat product, which I also can't stand, funny enough.

There are a number of recent posts that are advertisements for various things. Sport events, illegal ID schemes, and the like that pretty clearly fall under the traditional means of Spam as unwanted/unwelcome solicitations.

[PoeticNightmare]

I've lost all context as to what "spam" means anymore. Its definition has slowly broadened to be almost all-encompassing, and the word is thrown around as liberally as the word "the". I believe it is now something that one person finds annoying, so it must be stopped. Is that pretty close? Goes along with the culture at large I guess. I think from here on I will only acknowledge that word in reference to the meat product, which I also can't stand, funny enough.

It would be a good idea to acknowledge it on here when you see one of those threads, containing malicious links.

[kickman77]

I've lost all context as to what "spam" means anymore. Its definition has slowly broadened to be almost all-encompassing, and the word is thrown around as liberally as the word "the". I believe it is now something that one person finds annoying, so it must be stopped. Is that pretty close? Goes along with the culture at large I guess. I think from here on I will only acknowledge that word in reference to the meat product, which I also can't stand, funny enough.

Spam... I know what that is




:P Hopefully it made you laugh

[Roberto_the_First]

Spam... I know what that is

:P Hopefully it made you laugh

Actually, according to them, that's SPAM, not Spam. They made a big deal when that term came into general usage for unwanted email a while back.