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Fix the Spam issue!

Can the forum** moderators get their act together and fix the Spam issue!

(** I use the word very loosely for this limited featured thing we are stuck with!)

Comments

  • Hi, so I have certainly noticed intermittent spam problems with the forum in the past two weeks or so. It's worth talking about what I have in place right now to cut down on it.

    First, we use StopForumSpam. This is a reputation-based blacklist; forums report IP addresses, email addresses, and user names of people who have spammed in the past. If you appear on this list, your registration and any posts are blocked.

    Since that only works on people who are already known as spammers, we also use Akismet. This is the Wordpress service that flags spam in a variety of magic ways. Obviously, it has been letting things through recently.

    I wish there was a way to allow posts that are flagged a certain number of times to be automatically marked as spam and deleted, but I'm not aware of a way to do this with Vanilla. I'm certainly open to other ideas on blocking spam. I really do not want to get in the business of having to approve every single first post from new members, but that is one nuclear options I'm aware of.
  • I log on roughly once a day. I've personally only seen a half dozen spam posts in the last few weeks. All were threads that were obviously spam. I don't think I'm a member of any forums in which that isn't the case.
  • In my opinion if the same user account is able to be used to send spam over a number of days then the situation is not being handled correctly, especial as those spam are being marked as such.
  • I ban-delete every spammer. All their posts are all deleted automatically and the account is no longer usable. It's two clicks.

    Like I say, I haven't noticed spam of a remarkable amount. Maybe Chris is getting to it before I see it.
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