Spam

They, and ther posts, are gone.

My apologies for the delay in deleting them. I didn’t miss them; I’ve been decorating all day (racing to get the lounge in a proper state for Christmas) so didn’t see the forum since first thing this morning.

I’d imagine Dave and the other moderators will check things before they hit the delete button, but it would probably be simpler & safer if people were to link to their “profile” pages rather than listing the IDs directly?

Possibly safer if you work on the basis that Dave et al would delete without checking the facts.
I rather assumed, possibly incorrectly, that Dave took the info as a pointer to check the content.
After all if I pointed at 213 instead of 3213 (or some other similar or proximal number) and Dave just deleted 213 and all posts I suspect we’d all be a bit upset.

I’d done it just for ease. Suppose I should have gone for two-factor ID

And another Synoptic Boost in Bounties
https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/8/topics/9710

News item comment spam.

https://www.riscosopen.org/news/articles/2017/10/23/the-prime-time-london-show-2017#comment-334

Call me cynical, but…

https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/topics/9373#posts-72156

Or you’ve just been rude to a new user who might have just taken their first tentative steps in posting to the forum and have now been run over by the cynicism truck. ;-)

That’s a possibility Andrew, but having been a forum moderator elsewhere, the odds are strongly in favour of it being a test post. “That’s very useful”, “This topic is informative” and so on, posted with plausible sounding user names.
I’d love to be wrong, but………..

Moderators certainly have my thanks for maintaining forums and kicking the spammers.

I’ll go with the view of the more experienced than me ;-)

Sadly I don’t have the privilege to delete comments to news items, so I’ve emailed the webmaster.

Btw I do check before hitting the delete button :-)

Or you’ve just been rude to a new user who might have just taken their first tentative steps in posting to the forum and have now been run over by the cynicism truck.

If they make it look like spam, they’ll find it treated like spam.

If they make it look like spam, they’ll find it treated like spam.

And, yet, somehow, 5950 messages from user 439 managed to escape notice. :-P

User 439? That’ll be our resident gasbag, then…

:-P

I’ll pass that crown on to somebody else…

Ho hum, supplemental¹ spam 3500 and 3501

¹ Always more than needed.
Do you suppose a cattle prod inserted would give them a ‘boost’ :)

Spam is best fried. Spam fritters are pretty horrible, but less awful than any other spam dish. Fills the hole if you’re REALLY hungry and there’s nothing else.

And another: 3503

3504 & 3405?

3405

I’m wondering if the user sign up could be amended, at least for the next few weeks, such that it generates a mail into a mailbox accessible by administrators. If it’s genuine the associated mailbox will be too and they will see the instructions that get sent when the approval is done.

3410, and I really do think that blocking the sign up rather than playing whack-a-mole with the new accounts would be better.
Probably a job for Mr. Hodgkinson

Reject messages from new users of they contain links?
(with an explanation in case of legitimate)

The moles will get tired before I do.

3511 & 3512

You don’t need to flag this stuff up to me, you know – and the numbers don’t help anyway.

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

Even better would be a conditionally-refundable registration deposit – a nominal sum like a tenner via PayPal, which would ensure a valid identity and would, if misused, go to swell RISC OS Open coffers.

If we had a tenner for every pseudo-medical/“health” related spam received over the past week or so, it would amount to a significant sum!

But unfortunately the site is committed to a complex infrastructure system which seems to disallow, practically, any modification.