A brainstorm to cut down spam in SHForums

thetarget · Post by **thetarget** » Thu Dec 27, 2007 4:47 pm

Hey guys,

If you notice, SH have been bombarded with spams recently, is our safety precaution not done adequetely or is it no one bothered to report spam posts, or both? This website is open to audience of all, no age limit, no limit of any cultural differences.

I think there is a need to come up with plausible solutions to minimise spam activity in SHforums.

Tails5 · Post by **Tails5** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 11:49 am

Perhaps a DNS Blackhole list on registration? It works on my forum.

Flipper3 · Post by **Flipper3** » Fri Dec 28, 2007 7:38 pm

I think that we all understand that the spam has to be slowed down/stopped, but none of us can really think of a great idea on how to stop it.

I believe that TheCrymsonLegends suggestion is probably the way to go right now; just report all spam posts to make it easier on the moderators.

TheCrymsonLegends · Post by **TheCrymsonLegends** » Sat Dec 29, 2007 3:12 pm

Yeah while the forums are bombarded with spam we can't always get to it on time before some people read it. This includes people making accounts or bots for that matter who tend to like posting **** pics, links, and explicit language which may not be suitable for some of the members.

Reporting posts is the easiest way to fight off spam and trust me things are taken care of when spam/bots/or breaking any rules here on Smokyhosts, so report it and help us out.

There are a lot of ways to stop bots and such from spamming up the forums but they eventually figure ways around it and some people just for the heck of it make mass amounts of accounts then spam to be, in their minds, funny.

But for now all we can do is hope the members will report posts to make it a bit easier on us Moderators. If anyone can come up with anything to help out with the spam please by all means try.. I am removing 4 - 5 bot posts, and sometimes changing 5 - 8 spam messages a day.. if I miss out 2 - 3 days then it can get pretty hectic.

delivi · Post by **delivi** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 8:03 am

the best possible solution is to use something like CAPTCHA. There are plenty of CAPTCHA solutions out there. these can reduce the spam and also the activity of automated bots.

Tails5 · Post by **Tails5** » Mon Dec 31, 2007 5:11 pm

Problem is to use CAPTCHA you need to pay, unless you want the CAPTCHA logo on all the generated images.

Post by **SHAdmin** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 8:34 am

CAPTCHA and email verification is already active on the forums at the time of registration. So at the moment i dont think there are any bots spamming the forums, but they are actual human beings who manually register and spam in order to get some search engine results while the search engine bots scan the forums.

Tails5 · Post by **Tails5** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 1:53 pm

Add "****" to the swear filter!

thetarget · Post by **thetarget** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 4:36 pm

Any idea goes, really.

Since the problem cannot be 100% solved, spam cannot be further minimised, we should think of ways to reject certain information that is "not safe".

Disabling linking to certain domains
filtering words like **** as Tail5 said.

Since false positive is not preventable, maybe hiding, instead of rejecting can be used. Like minimising and maximising the entire post by toggle "show/hide" button. Or even do the blurring thing that http://www.expertexchange.com does.

Put spam aside, if I know that is a NSFW post, i'll not **** it. However, if the title is legit, but the content is not for the faint hearted, and I **** it, the damage has already caused.

thetarget · Post by **thetarget** » Tue Jan 01, 2008 4:37 pm

The link above is wrong. It should be http://www.experts-exchange.com/

Mods if you want, delete this post and paste it up