Holy....

Golrith

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Normal night, shows how popular FTB is :p

Spam police will be along soon to KaPow them all.
 

GreenZombie

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Jul 29, 2019
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I dont know how often new people create accounts. But it frankly looks like it would be less work to simply hide posts from new accounts by default until admins ok'd at least one post as "not spam".
 

ratchet freak

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Nov 11, 2012
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I dont know how often new people create accounts. But it frankly looks like it would be less work to simply hide posts from new accounts by default until admins ok'd at least one post as "not spam".
spam bots often lie in wait until they get the OK to start spamming

and a evaluation for new accounts would take more modpower than is currently available
 

GreenZombie

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spam bots often lie in wait until they get the OK to start spamming

and a evaluation for new accounts would take more modpower than is currently available

You don't evaluate new accounts. You evaluate the first post of accounts that have never posted before. There would seem to be more first posts by bots than first posts by real users. The modpower load would be lower if anything.
 

Vauthil

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Jul 29, 2019
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There are other countermeasures we aren't using to their potential that would auto-weed a lot of these if implemented. I've passed along a suggestion involving one of these last night, but implementation schedules are very fluid hereabouts as we're a fully volunteer staffed organization and things get done when they get done. Bottom line on the pre-approval thing, though, is that there are simply better and automated ways to handle this that we aren't appropriately leveraging. Manual solutions don't scale against automated problems, automated solutions should always been attempted first and haven't been.

I just banned 43 bots from the past six hour activity window, for a count on how many shove through in such a short period of time. Not the worst ever for a forum I've been on, but not realistic for quick manual handling on an ongoing basis.
 

jordsta95

New Member
Jul 29, 2019
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GOOOOOoooood morning spam hunters and welcome to page 2 of the general FTB chat forum, after reporting more than 2 (this will make sense in a second) spam posts on page 1 I was gladly treated to this:
cKT0z.png

Zoomed out so every post on that page could be seen...
Now why was that "more than 2 important" because there are only 2 posts on that page which aren't spam. That means more than a page of spam in that sub-forum. Heck there's more on page 3, but then it sorta dissipates.

But seriously. Why is the "first <x> posts need to be moderated/approved" thing not in place?
I'd be more than happy to spend an hour a day just clicking approve/disapprove on threads, instead of having to wait 30 seconds to report a second post for spam... Because that's just one sub-forum I linked, 1 page is just over 10 minutes (to report the spam), then there is the wait for the moderator to remove it...
 

Golrith

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I'd have to agree. Also, the forums need more moderators in different time zones. More than willing to help. I'm in the UK, and it's at least 8 hours from when I see the spam until they are removed.

I think the account validation is the best approach with a group of validators. Quicker, more dynamic, and shows that the community cares for it's forums and picks up the trash.
 

jordsta95

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Jul 29, 2019
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I'd have to agree. Also, the forums need more moderators in different time zones. More than willing to help. I'm in the UK, and it's at least 8 hours from when I see the spam until they are removed.

I think the account validation is the best approach with a group of validators. Quicker, more dynamic, and shows that the community cares for it's forums and picks up the trash.
I'm also a willing Brit. I am ready to offer my services to the greater good
 

jordsta95

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Jul 29, 2019
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I was going to start reporting the ones on page 1 today... then I noticed that only 5 on page one aren't spam.

The spambots are multiplying faster than we can stop them.
 

DeathOfTime

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Jul 29, 2019
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They are still at it. Been reading a post occasionally and starting to think it isn't a spam bot, but someones attempt at installing a virus in the human mind. Through use of strange word combinations. Either way I feel my sanity slipping every time I read a post from them.