Dealing with the spammers - Help us make it work

[Ryan]

Hey Farkers,

As you've no doubt noticed over the past few months, worthless, half-bred spammers are constantly clogging up the forums imploring us to purchase their cheap IPhones, DJ Gear, cut-price Nike trainers and lonely Russian singles. It's also clearly getting worse and worse as time goes on.

Obviously, they're creating a lot of extra work for the moderation team and a lot of unnecessary annoyance for all of you, so Scott has recently installed some measures that should make it much for difficult for them for fill our forums with their shit.

Unfortunately these measures may also occasionally make it difficult for legitimate users to post legitimate posts. If this happens to you, you can help us improve the system by;

1) Not attempting to re-post the post that has been declined. It won't magically slip through the net on the 2nd, 3rd or 27th attempt.

2) Posting in this thread letting us know that you've had a problem with a post, obviously you can't quote your original post in here though, or it will also be declined. Let us know you've had an issue and we can look into it.

Unfortunately for those of you who are engaged in recreational scam-baiting, this will probably mean a sudden decrease in the number of targets you'll be able to acquire on any given day. You guys keep chasing that rainbow though! Love your work!

 

[Octane_Matty]

Hey ryan,

are they real spammers or bots?

because if they are bots alot can be done to prevent their registration of accounts

cheers

 

[Ryan]

A lot is already done to prevent bots registering accounts, these are real people unfortunately.

 

[Sputnick]

what sort of retard would want to be a spammer. They know no one is going to buy their shit! What a BAD job!!!!!

 

[Sps.]

what sort of retard would want to be a spammer. They know no one is going to buy their shit! What a BAD job!!!!!

They live in some poor african country and have little to no food or items.

Money is hard to come by when you're poor.

 

[tu plang]

They live in some poor african country and have little to no food or items.

Money is hard to come by when you're poor.

... You aren't serious are you?* So spammers generally have no food (or items) but they have a computer with the internet. Seems plausible.

In reply to the original comment... You may be shocked to learn they never even had the products to begin with ...

*I've had to say that waay to often lately.

 

[BUSHPIG]

... You aren't serious are you?* So spammers generally have no food (or items) but they have a computer with the internet. Seems plausible.

In reply to the original comment... You may be shocked to learn they never even had the products to begin with ...

*I've had to say that waay to often lately.

Actually... funny you say that tu plang because my mums other half got a email the other day with a picture of an Indian bloke in the middle of a poverty stricken street with a laptop and his own little power generator to run it!
Ime absolutely serious and if i get around to it i will get him to send me the email so i can send it to you.

 

[Viv92]

Money is hard to come by when you're poor.

You don't say...

Actually... funny you say that tu plang because my mums other half got a email the other day with a picture of an Indian bloke in the middle of a poverty stricken street with a laptop and his own little power generator to run it!
Ime absolutely serious and if i get around to it i will get him to send me the email so i can send it to you.

Photoshop is a wonderful thing...

The cost of that setup would probably be WAY to be big an initial outlay to bother with the 'business'.

 

[mountain_bike man]

there is a huge problem in the dj/4x/street thread with constant what bike should i get, is this part good??
and there are so many 1 posters...
its great that this problem is being dealt with.

 

[willee]

im with the above great that these probs are being dealt with should talk to the guys that own farkin to see if they can do much.....

probs already hav any way just suggesting

 

[parker93]

They live in some poor african country and have little to no food or items.

Money is hard to come by when you're poor.

But they still can afford the internet? Haha, Its all just a big scam, for all I know, you could be a scammer

 

[Spanky_Ham]

dear i8poo,

You sir are a fucktard!!! Im seriously hoping your going to retract that last sh*t comment.

this is farkin.net not fucktards.net!!! you know where you should be...


spanky's light tech.

 

[Octane_Matty]

grip sport made my frame worse,.... they tried to weld carbon fibre!!!!!

That sounds like something YOU would do, not grip.

 

[trolleyed]

A lot is already done to prevent bots registering accounts, these are real people unfortunately.

One method i've seen work well is blocking the first post/thread a new account makes until a moderator verifies it is genuine. The account is then free to post normally.

This is a little extra work for mods (maximum 10 seconds per user?), but how many new members do you get every day? How about spammers? If their first post is retarded you can just block the account (or IP if you wish, but this won't affect spammers). And maybe introduce a maximum number of account creations per IP so they can't just sign up again, and waste more moderators time.

I think you should seriously consider this.

 

[Binaural]

One method i've seen work well is blocking the first post/thread a new account makes until a moderator verifies it is genuine. The account is then free to post normally.

This is a little extra work for mods (maximum 10 seconds per user?), but how many new members do you get every day? How about spammers? If their first post is retarded you can just block the account (or IP if you wish, but this won't affect spammers). And maybe introduce a maximum number of account creations per IP so they can't just sign up again, and waste more moderators time.

I think you should seriously consider this.

Not a good idea, since with 11000 odd members that can equal a lot of work. I don't know how many new users join per day but if it's taken about 5 years to reach 11000 that is about 2000 a year, which equals 20000s by your 10s estimate per year, or 6 hours of solid mod work a year. Even if Farkin is growing half as much that's still a lot of mindless dull reading and clicking.

A better system would be to take advantage of the fact that 95% plus of spam is obviously spam (the other 5% is people trying to use the forums for advertising without paying). If more than 5 people report a thread as spam, then the thread can be automatically deleted and a message sent to the thread originator. If it's somehow legit then it can be restored. I'm always opening threads with more than 5 messages telling the spammer to go and die, why not use their annoyance?

 

[trolleyed]

A better system would be to take advantage of the fact that 95% plus of spam is obviously spam (the other 5% is people trying to use the forums for advertising without paying). If more than 5 people report a thread as spam, then the thread can be automatically deleted and a message sent to the thread originator. If it's somehow legit then it can be restored. I'm always opening threads with more than 5 messages telling the spammer to go and die, why not use their annoyance?

Not a good idea, this would allow me (and a group of friends, or just me if I really wanted) to delete anything we/I wanted. Even if its legit this still creates more work, it's a vicious cycle.

2000 new members a year, thats ~5 new members per day. Thats a minutes work, divided by how many moderators? (http://www.farkin.net/forums/showgroups.php seems to be down...) That's not all at once, its a spread load. I'm not trying to shoot you down, just pointing out your argument is invalid. Like I said, I've seen it work on much larger forums than this

 

[Binaural]

Not a good idea, this would allow me (and a group of friends, or just me if I really wanted) to delete anything we/I wanted. Even if its legit this still creates more work, it's a vicious cycle.

2000 new members a year, thats ~5 new members per day. Thats a minutes work, divided by how many moderators? (http://www.farkin.net/forums/showgroups.php seems to be down...) That's not all at once, its a spread load. I'm not trying to shoot you down, just pointing out your argument is invalid. Like I said, I've seen it work on much larger forums than this

Easily solved - if the first 5 of 20 readers report a post then delete, otherwise it stays.

Personally I don't like your proposed method because requiring approval of a first post is a good way to chase people away from a forum. I know at least 2 forums I've posted on regarding technical questions and never come back because there's a couple of days lag and I've had my question answered elsewhere in the meantime.