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Spam reporting

Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2010 8:18 am
by greyhoundcode
It's possible to flag up posts as flouting the forum rules as I'm sure we all know - in this case I'm thinking of spam - and I assume a moderator is appropriately alerted and can then delete the offending post.

It would be good if, based on the number of quality reports received (ie, if user X reports 20 posts as being spam and a moderator then deletes 100% of those posts) users are given a sort of reliability weighting, and when it reaches a certain point - say 30 reports with 100% accuracy or something - then from there on the forums take reports from those users on trust and deletes the posts without moderator intervention.

Might be a faster way to get rid of spam postings?

Re: Spam reporting

Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2010 11:27 am
by Benjamin
You can report posts by clicking on the ! icon on the bottom right of each posts. We usually delete them or move them all as we find them.

Re: Spam reporting

Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2010 1:46 pm
by Jonah Bron
That would probably be too much trouble to set up for the Admins to want to bother with. Around here, they use a different method:

The "hang around a really really long time and maybe after about ten years and if we recognize you as being trust-worthy and if we have an overload of spam or some other reason, you might become a mod" method.

It's worked very well so far.

:lol:

Re: Spam reporting

Posted: Sat Nov 06, 2010 4:39 pm
by Weirdan
Jonah Bron wrote: It's worked very well so far.
None of the mods were here for 10 years though (the earliest registration is from 2002) :twisted: . But other than that - yes, that's the method we use.

Re: Spam reporting

Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2010 4:11 pm
by Benjamin
Seeing how programmers are lazy and the amount of time I am spending per day deleting spam has recently exceeded 1 hour, I have modified the phpBB codebase.

I have added code which will require users with less than 15 posts to enter a reCaptcha image every time they post. As time permits I may also block the ability for new accounts to enter profile & signature information.

The phpBB codebase is very unusual, so if any issues with this creep up please let me know.

Re: Spam reporting

Posted: Sun Nov 07, 2010 4:28 pm
by VladSun
Thanks, Benjamin.

Re: Spam reporting

Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 11:59 am
by John Cartwright
Hey Benjamin,

You might want to consider changing the error message to indicate 15 messages are required before captcha is bypassed, not 10,000.

Good work though, I like the modifications.

Not that it matters for me :D

Re: Spam reporting

Posted: Sun Jan 23, 2011 12:41 pm
by Benjamin
That was only for testing so it would show up for me.

Re: Spam reporting

Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2011 4:06 pm
by John Cartwright
Benjamin wrote:That was only for testing so it would show up for me.
Ah. Gotcha. :drunk:

Re: Spam reporting

Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2011 6:03 am
by Darhazer
Benjamin wrote:The phpBB codebase is very unusual, so if any issues with this creep up please let me know.
Well, actually only the newbies will have any issues, and if they cannot post, they will unable to report them :) And I bet they won't find the topic anyway (there should be quite visible topic about this change in the forums)
So we need to create new account and test this feature :)

However this beats my still unwritten suggestion to have a counter and if more then let's say 5 posts of the same user are reported as spam, temporary disable the user's ability to post unless moderator reviews the reports :mrgreen: