Spam

From time to time these fora are spammed; the last case was yesterday.

Please, if you see spam: don’t respond to it, don’t react to it, don’t even mention it in your postings.

A site administrator will be along within a few hours to remove the posting(s) and any thread(s) started by spammers, and terminate the spammer’s account.

Aww, I/we can’t mock an “advert” that is so comically out of date as to be funny?
Pffft – you’re so boring! :-P

(^_^)

A site administrator will be along within a few hours to remove the posting(s)

You hope.
Perhaps if there were a larger number of site administrators that would be true.

Meanwhile the comments about extending the thread are probably true.

Perhaps if there were a larger number of site administrators that would be true.

Is it possible to give “delete message” permissions to selected people (or, at the very least, a “hide message” option?).

There has not been a shortage of volunteers to moderate – myself included.

And for the record, if I had moderator access, I would have just zapped the spam, not replied to it! ;-) Being a moderator is a responsibility. I used to do it on the Neuros Technology forum (piccy here).

FYI it looks like the spammers have spotted that we have a bug tracker (see ticket 394). Hopefully they’ll limit themselves to just creating new tickets, as there doesn’t seem to be a way to sort the list by the last updated column.

I deleted the account and the threads started in the fora, but I can’t see a way to delete a ticket.

I can’t see a way to delete a ticket.

On the other hand, perhaps I can… setting its status to Invalid seems to have made it go away.

Well, it isn’t visible with default filtering, anyway.

There is another reason not to reply to spam: an unfamiliar name, on the front page, for the last poster to a forum makes it easier to notice that it has been spammed.

an unfamiliar name, on the front page, for the last poster to a forum makes it easier to notice that it has been spammed.

That’s useful; it allows the spam to be dealt with by those able to…

…as long as the forum has only the one (spammed) thread, and no other threads on which people may wish to comment. :/

That’s useful; it allows the spam to be dealt with by those able to…

For the documentation pages that’s everyone and a check of the recently revised page gives the pointer to a page that needs reverting to a previous version. Not had to do that recently.

…as long as the forum has only the one (spammed) thread, and no other threads on which people may wish to comment. :/

For those who use PeeCee’s to read the forums there are add-ons that allow you to monitor for updates. Of course if you don’t have edit/delete access it ain’t much use knowing it’s there.

For the documentation pages that’s everyone and a check of the recently revised page gives the pointer to a page that needs reverting to a previous version.

Quite, but Dave said “an unfamiliar name, on the front page, for the last poster to a forum”

There are perfectly good reasons for not replying to spam – I’m just pointing out that isn’t one of them.

There are perfectly good reasons for not replying to spam – I’m just pointing out that isn’t one of them.

Agreed.
We do what we can, and Rick was requesting the ability to do more – which I’d say is one thing that ROOL staff then don’t need to do. Not a big item with current low spam levels but the checks alone would be time consuming.

What’s with the recent influx of hundred-links-per-message spam? Maybe we ought to have a test on the signup?

• RISC OS runs on which processor?
  • x86
  • ARM
  • PIC

• RISC OS is…
  • American
  • British
  • American dammit, they invented the Internet…and computers…and television…and cars…and apple pie…and concorde…and radio…and lightbulbs…and answering machines…and CDs…and democracy…and America itself…and fake boobs…and electricity…and the wheel……… What did the British ever invent, except tea bags?

• Raspberry Pi is…
  • Something you eat
  • A small computer
  • An impressionist era painting

• The correct response to a malformed SYN packet is…
  • Depends upon iptables configuration
  • Not my problem, I didn’t write the networking stack
  • Consume 100% of CPU time until eventual crash and subsequent freeze

• You are here because you are…
  • Bored
  • Looking for a fast and lightweight operating system
  • Wondering if you can install this on your PC instead of using Windows 7

How about it?

We do what we can, and Rick was requesting the ability to do more – which I’d say is one thing that ROOL staff then don’t need to do. Not a big item with current low spam levels but the checks alone would be time consuming.

There is an easy way to avoid most of spam: moderate the first message of a new user.

Takes time to moderate posts, and users tend to get a bit iffy if they think their problems may or may not turn up in a sensible time frame.

Maybe there should be a “Spam!” button next to posts, and clicking it will flag the message as “should be looked at”. Sounds mundane so far, so here’s the twist. If more than n users (with more than, say, 250-500 posts so have been a contributing part of the community a good while) report the message, it will be automatically deleted. In this way, moderation can be crowdsourced as something we can contribute jointly to, with no one person being “god”, it will depend upon five or ten or twenty (or whatever n is chosen to be) of us doing the simple act of flagging the message. In this case, it implies that multiple people consider the message to be unwanted, it can therefore be removed automagically without the need for specific moderator intervention each time (saving them a thankless task).

How about it? ;-)

Oh, and if anybody considers coming such a thing into the forum code, don’t forget to add the ability to silently discard reports made by certain users. Hopefully there won’t be a need for this here, but you do sometimes come across crybabies that demand instant moderation of anybody that disagrees with them. [yup, speak from experience, and it is astonishing how many claim “1st amendment rights” regardless of where they, or the server, is located <sigh>]

The most obvious snag with your proposed crowd sourced moderation is that it only takes a scumbag with some throwaway accounts to delete legitimate posts and cause havoc, rather than make a small temporary mess that is soon cleared up.

A proper moderator also has the power to summarily delete a spammer’s account.

The most obvious snag with your proposed crowd sourced moderation is that it only takes a scumbag with some throwaway accounts to delete legitimate posts and cause havoc,

Think I hadn’t thought of that already? :-)

If more than n users (with more than, say, 250-500 posts so have been a contributing part of the community a good while) report the message, it will be automatically deleted.

And…

A proper moderator also has the power to summarily delete a spammer’s account.

That is true, and a proper moderator will still be needed to tidy up bogus accounts. The spam message deletion, we can at least deal with ourselves – as suggested.

Takes time to moderate posts

Just the first one of the user. Not the others.

Just a thought, what about allowing veteran/established posters to send spam or other possibly offensive posts to a “Quarantine” forum until it can be vetted by the appointed moderators.
It may still be viewed by all and responded to if they wish to do so until it is removed or re-instated as deemed appropriate.
Similar to the way I guess some of us may view the “Test” forum. Generally ignore it, but occasionally have a look out of curiosity!

As far as captchas, quizzes and so forth go – the reason why spambots are so successful these days is because they aren’t bots. They’re usually people. It’s click farm and the like being run from countries with very low wages.

On the bug tracker: We’ll have to keep an eye on that. It takes a non-destructive approach so even admins cannot delete or edit tickets (as far as I can remember and as far as I can tell from playing around with it a short while ago). Everyone can only add to the comment history / change state / etc.

they aren’t bots. They’re usually people. It’s click farm and the like being run from countries with very low wages

Any value in blocking stuff from blacklisted IP’s?

As far as captchas, quizzes and so forth go – the reason why spambots are so successful these days is because they aren’t bots.

That is partly why I suggested a RISC OS specific quiz. A captcha can be solved by hand, as can a mathematics test. Even a “click on the kitten” is easy. Something specific to us may require a little more thinking.

Speaking of thinking – I think a lot of spam can be blocked if the fora just rejects the first n posts of a new user that contain offsite links. You can even specify this in the new user sign up (don’t give an exact amount, just say that posts containing links will be rejected at first (perhaps, for the first week?)) – the experience of my wiki and looking at the log files is that when you say “users cannot edit any content until they have contacted me for permission” in BIG RED LETTERS . . . . . they try anyway. Probably can’t read English.

It is quite possible to interact here as a legitimate user without providing links (at first) and if your reason for coming was to link to something, there are ways around it, like www-dot-riscosopen-dot-org etc.