Spam protection on LTT

[jurian123]

You missed my follow up to myself haha.

ow shit lol

If you see someone spamming thread. Report it to a moderator.

Most of the time there are no mods online.

This has been discussed a lot in the Forum Suggestions thread, but we basically come back to the same issue - these spam protection methods will negatively affect new legitimate users.

There are tons of new users that come to the forum to ask a question, and if we required them to make a certain amount of posts before they can make a thread, then these users would most likely just leave to go somewhere else.

True.

[lutewan]

Please no.

why? im not talking about a reply

[jayctech]

Shouldn't be more than 10 minutes between when you're allowed to make threads.

[LogicalDrm]

ow shit lol 

 

Pease

 

Most of the time there are no mods online. 

 

Learn

 

True. 

 

To use multiquote. For me this kind of SPAM!!! is more annoying than some random users posting crap which gets removed within 15mins.

 

Besides, its funny how these antispam threads emerge right after every new spammer. Anyone else seeing connection? Another besides. Its been stated more than once in Forum Suggestions and other antispam threads that these aren't bots making threads. There is person behind them so adding CAPTCHA or other humanize methods to prevent posting would have almost no effect. The spam would still be there but maybe not in such extence as it shows up now.

 

E: Just noticed your member title @jurian123. Makes this thread seem like a bad joke.

[Thony]

I dont agree with OPs original idea. If u have two untelated questions u have to wait....or if something important happens after u posted something.

This forum needs a bot that would check for topics with same titles and mark them so mods would be immediately notified and could act.

Its the only way because i dont think there is a software that could decide which topic (same subject, different users) is better and should stay.

Unless we stick with "1st come, 1st serve" policy. In this case bot could easily remove reposts.

[colonel_mortis]

We employ all of the methods currently at our disposal (and reasonable to use on a forum like this) to prevent spam as much as possible, and as far as I know, it does prevent a lot of the spam, but there is always some that slips through the net.

 

Having an interval between making threads has been suggested, and as long as it's not very long (I would say a maximum of 5 minutes), it would have negligible impact on regular users, but it would also not make a massive difference to a lot of the spam (yes, it would make some difference). However, it is my understanding that a separate interval for new threads and new posts is not possible, which is why we can't implement it at the moment.

Having a captcha on every post is not only going to get very annoying for legitimate members, but it will also not prevent spam. All of the spammers that make it onto the forum have already bypassed one captcha, so there's no reason why they couldn't bypass another one.

Filtering based on thread content will just mean that the spammers will find ways to bypass the filter; I don't think it's possible to apply the advanced filtering logic needed to prevent spam anyway.

Requiring a specific post count in order to make a thread is a terrible idea for a forum like this - most people join either for a giveaway or to create a thread, usually in New Builds and Planning or Troubleshooting.

Threads requiring approval before they are visible sounds good in theory, but the number of threads created by new users means that the moderators will be swamped by posts to review. There are nowhere near enough mods to make that idea feasible on this forum.

Checking for threads with the same title would be surprisingly ineffective - most of the spam threads use different (weird) names, while it's not uncommon to have a legit thread title like "Please Help!!!!!", which would end up being flagged by this system.

 

Just report one of the spam threads and the mods will clear it up as soon as possible.

 

PS. @jurian123 as has already been pointed out, please use the multiquote functionality of the forum. I have merged your posts for you this time, but in future, please only make one post to respond to all the posts at once.

[jurian123]

@colonel_mortis thank you. I really want the best for this forum. And this guy (+91 spammer) is here for almost 2 months. So something has to change. Good that u look into it. i got woodenmarker as my victim, but sometimes there are no mods available. And than the spammer continues until he is banned. That takes more than 4 hours. And everyone was like were are the mods or admins.  

[1823alex]

We could just make it so certain words make the thread temporarily locked until a mod looks at it. So I make a thread with Kitchen or something in the title, it goes under review for spam it's not spam so it goes to the public.

[colonel_mortis]

@colonel_mortis thank you. I really want the best for this forum. And this guy (+91 spammer) is here for almost 2 months. So something has to change. Good that u look into it. i got woodenmarker as my victim, but sometimes there are no mods available. And than the spammer continues until he is banned. That takes more than 4 hours. And everyone was like were are the mods or admins.  

All of the spammers that spammed the forum today had their accounts banned today, within 2-3 hours of their accounts being created. While this response time is not ideal, and usually the spam is removed much faster.

 

We could just make it so certain words make the thread temporarily locked until a mod looks at it. So I make a thread with Kitchen or something in the title, it goes under review for spam it's not spam so it goes to the public.

While that could work for some spam, there is other spam (albeit less annoying but more nefarious) that would remain unaffected by a filter like that. Not to mention that as far as I know, that is not currently possible to implement on this forum.

[1823alex]

All of the spammers that spammed the forum today had their accounts banned today, within 2-3 hours of their accounts being created. While this response time is not ideal, and usually the spam is removed much faster.

 

While that could work for some spam, there is other spam (albeit less annoying but more nefarious) that would remain unaffected by a filter like that. Not to mention that as far as I know, that is not currently possible to implement on this forum.

Oh, ok it was just an idea if you were able to do it.