[Solved] Spam - straight to delete instead of quarantine?

[Hagar Delest]

Got it!

I had set the permissions to NO:

But after a quick search, I found out that the correct setting is in fact NEVER.

So I've made a test and it works, here is a post in the moderation queue:

And the moderation panel to allow or not:

So I have to change the settings for all the forums and that's it. Give me 10 minutes... The ACP is indeed a PITA...

Note that I've also found out that the post limit can be 1, even if the user sends 10 posts, they will go to the moderation queue as long as the first has not been approved.
When posting a moderated post, there is a rather explicit message about the post having to be approved.

So we are ready now!

[floris v]

[TheGurkha]

Excellent.

[floris v]

The next step of the spammers may be to post innocent looking stuff first, and then they may edit the posts once they have been approved. How are we going to deal with that?

[thomasjk]

Good work Hagar.

[RGB]

The next step of the spammers may be to post innocent looking stuff first, and then they may edit the posts once they have been approved. How are we going to deal with that?

Periodic searches for "http" may help: the search engine will detect that text even if hidden on [ url=--- tags

Of course it will find the "please read the survival guide" too...

[Hagar Delest]

The next step of the spammers may be to post innocent looking stuff first, and then they may edit the posts once they have been approved. How are we going to deal with that?

Well, let's have some rest first!

The http search seems to be a good hint.

[floris v]

Would it be possible for Apache to threaten websites that are advertised so heavily with legal action (damages) or to track the source of the spammers and threaten that with a damages claim?

[Greengiant224]

Floris:

Would it be possible for Apache to threaten websites that are advertised so heavily with legal action (damages) or to track the source of the spammers and threaten that with a damages claim?

An excellent idea. It's tantamount to stealing bandwidth.
Trace the culprits, get their earth address and invoice them for the costs of hosting their advertisements. World-wide spam postings gone overnight.
Better still but quite drastic, put them up against the wall and shoot them by firing squad.

Perhaps the mods could have a look at the rules at http://www.autoitscript.com/forum/forum-2/announcement-13-forum-rules/
where they are explicitly stated. Mischievious posters are given a holiday, banned and their IP address is banned.
Offending posts are deleted immediately.

I'm sure something like this could be implemented here as well.

Then we could all spend more time helping the genuine users of OOo/Lo which is the object of this form.

Just my 2 cents worth.

[Villeroy]

Several years ago this was the business model of an Israeli company. They had to close their business because it could be used as a weapon (distribute spam for something in order to attack it).

[acknak]

So what's the procedure when a post is inappropriate?

I just encountered one--a 'decent' message but linking to commercial registry-cleaning software. I unchecked "notify user" and clicked on "disapprove" and that made the post go away. Then I went to the user profile and banned the username.

Is that right? Anything else?

Any way to discuss a post? I guess in such a borderline case, we have to approve, then discuss it as a separate topic in the private forum.

Oh, and thanks for digging through this, Hagar--nice work!

[floris v]

I saw one dubious post too - I suppose that a discussion thread with a link to it would clear things up a lot, it won't help if we all see a post and leave it in the queue without in some way informing each other that we don't know what to do with it.

[Greengiant224]

Acknak & floris v

Can I just suggest that any 'mod' who has reason to believe a post is inappropriate to delete it forthwith.
No questions asked. The 'mods' authority is final. End of.

You have to decide yourself what you deem is inappropriate, and all other forum members
I'm sure, will accept the 'mods' decision in this respect.

[floris v]

Greengiant224: Thank you for your suggestions. But that's not how we work here. We're not trigger-happy eleven year old immature kids who are proud to be "staff" and want to delete as many posts as possible. We want to delete as few posts as possible. Just the spam and then what's hard to tell apart from spam. We have been working on those lines for several years now and are quite happy with it.
We know that some posts are hard to judge, so we like to be sure that we delete the right ones. We take into account that some people aren't native speakers and may express a heartfelt "thank you" in a way that might easily be considered as "+1 post count" posting.

[Hagar Delest]

I just encountered one--a 'decent' message but linking to commercial registry-cleaning software. I unchecked "notify user" and clicked on "disapprove" and that made the post go away. Then I went to the user profile and banned the username.

That's what I do (I let the notification to the user but this is just a detail, perhaps it shows that there is no need registering again under another account to multiply the posts here).

Any way to discuss a post? I guess in such a borderline case, we have to approve, then discuss it as a separate topic in the private forum.

Indeed. But in this case, post limit must be set to 2 for a minimum.

Well, that's a lot of energy spent for spam. Note that the current situation is a kind of regression since once a post is disapproved, it's deleted, there is no way to revert it nor control the decision (compared to our process of Quarantine section). So we are already in a situation where the mods are alone. But I don't really mind. Time has changed and as long as spam is the top priority, we have to adapt. So let's trust the moderators. The only point I see is that in case someone wants to complain, there is no real contact given here AFAIK. The forumadmin mail address was a great help because people who couldn't register or who complained had the possibility to contact us directly.

But the more I think about the situation, the more i think that we are fighting spammers who have broken the captcha (has been done several months ago but the "technology" may have come only now in the hands of groups targeting the forum among other targets). If we fix this, maybe we will be back to normal. See also this topic where we have discussed the registration process: Spam.

[floris v]

We can discuss the pending posts in the private forum and disapprove them after reaching consensus. Of course that'd not be necessary for blatant spam or nonsense posts.

I went back to the admin panel of the Dutch forum and found that you can disable editing your own posts for the newly registered users (and any other group, of course). That'd settle the problem of people posting innocent messages to be edited later - if we keep a rather high post count like 20.

[Hagar Delest]

I thought about forbidding the edition of NRU posts. But they won't be able to tag their post as solved. And it means much more posts to approve.

Perhaps we can quote the pending post and create a topic starting with this quote in the Private section for discussion when necessary.

[floris v]

I thought about forbidding the edition of NRU posts. But they won't be able to tag their post as solved. And it means much more posts to approve.

Many users don't do that, anyway. How often are moderators tagging topics as solved? Not having to worry about NRU spammers editing their posts seems to be worth the extra work. And approving posts isn't that much work. You can tick all okay posts and approve them with a single click (and disapprove the baddies in much the same way, less fuss than deleting, let alone moving them to the Deleted folder).

Perhaps we can quote the pending post and create a topic starting with this quote in the Private section for discussion when necessary.

Exactly my idea.

[kingfisher]

Perhaps a related topic. When trying to make a second post last night I was told that I could not post again "so soon" after making a post. Is that part of the anti-spam campaign and does it have to apply to all member groups?

[floris v]

Perhaps a related topic. When trying to make a second post last night I was told that I could not post again "so soon" after making a post. Is that part of the anti-spam campaign and does it have to apply to all member groups?

Happened to me too - I checked and it seems that such settings are forum wide. I wonder by now what the phpbb developers were smoking.

[Hagar Delest]

Strange, I just checked and Volunteers are set to ignore flood limit...

[Hagar Delest]

...And moderators too.

Seems to work for me.

[RoryOF]

Now that the spam is sort of under control, is it possible to put a particular user

Edit: http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=102&t=53384

on constant monitoring, so that all his posts need to be approved? I'm thinking of suspicious posters, who have a revealing .sig and who post one-line replies? I know this can be done on some other boards (Yahoo groups, for example)

[floris v]

Bookmark his profile page? Can't think of anything else right now.

[Hagar Delest]

Now that the spam is sort of under control, is it possible to put a particular user

Edit: http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=102&t=53384

on constant monitoring, so that all his posts need to be approved? I'm thinking of suspicious posters, who have a revealing .sig and who post one-line replies?

But currently there is nothing really wrong. I guess that the next step would be to edit his existing posts, not post new ones. So we would have no reason to disapprove the new posts.

I'm for the immediate ban.

[Villeroy]

I asked him about his intentions and I'm inclined to take his posting of today as an indirect answer: What Is SEO
He is a victim of the "earn-lots-of-cash-on-the-internet" mafia.

[RoryOF]

Note that, if one disapproves a post because it is spam, there seems to be no record of who the poster was, so one cannot easily find who it was to ban him. Best to ban him first, then disapprove the post (or else note his name).

[floris v]

Note that, if one disapproves a post because it is spam, there seems to be no record of who the poster was, so one cannot easily find who it was to ban him. Best to ban him first, then disapprove the post (or else note his name).

Open the profile page in a separate tab before you delete any posts. Then ban him from that.
What I don't like is that you can't see on the profile page that a user has been banned already.

[Hagar Delest]

Open the profile page in a separate tab before you delete any posts. Then ban him from that.

+1. Note that if you missed it, since post count will be back to 0, he should still be moderated if he tries to post again.

What I don't like is that you can't see on the profile page that a user has been banned already.

I had requested that last year: Banning management...

[acknak]

I've been looking for a long time for some way to monitor a specific user (or list of users).

Is it possible to put individual users on moderation permanently?