Bots Attacking Fourms!

[DisconnectedYT]

Im am sick of seeing these chinese bots that keep joining these fourms and then telling us to go to there uni's and colleges and stuff!
CAN YOU PLEASE  CONTROLL THIS FOURM PROPERLY!

[themctipers]

just report the threads as spam. mods will get on it as soon as possible

 

also, this has been discussed before if you're thinking of banning the language.

[GreezyJeezy]

lol you cant do anything about it, other then ban the account, and way to post this in GD

[Guest]

An issue this big, I would assure that they would be working on countering this. I wouldn't worry about it. If anything, sending in more reports of the "bots" would probably be the best idea. 

[Enderman]

There is a report button at the bottom for a reason. Use it.

[Gravemind]

 

Chill, dude.

[LogicalDrm]

Technically they aren't bots. They are human controlled spammer accounts.

[ThinkWithPortals]

8 hours ago, DisconnectedYT said:

CAN YOU PLEASE  CONTROLL THIS FOURM PROPERLY!

I challenge you to come up with a reasonable solution to this other than just continually reporting and banning them.

 

Hint: there isn't one. It's been stated by @colonel_mortis that this is only the tip of the iceberg, there's lots of other spam that gets blocked by the filter so we're lucky this is all we're seeing. It could be substantially worse.

[Tosa]

In the case of shit loads of spam, I don't think restoring it all is the thing to do; the mods will probably discover it themselves and a shit ton of reports just means they've got a lot more shit to go through, which takes time.  

[Tech_Dreamer]

Judgement Day!!

[jagdtigger]

3 hours ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

I challenge you to come up with a reasonable solution to this other than just continually reporting and banning them.

 

Hint: there isn't one. It's been stated by @colonel_mortis that this is only the tip of the iceberg, there's lots of other spam that gets blocked by the filter so we're lucky this is all we're seeing. It could be substantially worse.

I solved it long ago for one of my friends. It just asks questions in a way that it cant be properly translated to english, but anyone from Hungary can understand it .

[ThinkWithPortals]

1 minute ago, jagdtigger said:

I solved it long ago for one of my friends. It just asks questions in a way that it cant be properly translated to english, but anyone from Hungary can understand it .

The mods have said already that they aren't going to do anything to limit signups by language. That could open up LMG to all manner of discrimination lawsuits.

[Tieox]

New members can only post in offtopic to introduce themselves, once they've made 2 posts there they can post elsewhere on the forum?

[jagdtigger]

22 minutes ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

The mods have said already that they aren't going to do anything to limit signups by language. That could open up LMG to all manner of discrimination lawsuits.

That is true, but no one will sue a small forum like his . Even though there most be some way to do the same in english(in way that only a real person can answer it). But since its not my native language i do not know if its possible.

Edited August 19, 2016 by jagdtigger

[NinjaJc01]

7 minutes ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

The mods have said already that they aren't going to do anything to limit signups by language. That could open up LMG to all manner of discrimination lawsuits.

Limit post frequency for those under 10 posts?

[WkdPaul]

12 hours ago, DisconnectedYT said:

CAN YOU PLEASE  CONTROLL THIS FOURM PROPERLY!

 

https://linustechtips.com/main/topic/965477-community-standards/

 

Quote

• "Don't be a dick" - Wil Wheaton.

 

From the community guidelines, I'm guessing that includes people that are taking care of the forum, most of which aren't paid and are doing it voluntarily!

 

You could enforce all kind of rules, a small fraction of spam will always find ways to go through the cracks!

[Litargirio]

37 minutes ago, Kierax said:

New members can only post in offtopic to introduce themselves, once they've made 2 posts there they can post elsewhere on the forum?

Thing is. Posts in Off-Topic don't add to the post count.

 

If they started counting, all of the sudden everyone would have +9999999 posts.

 

Even if they opened a new subforum for introductions, the spammers would just post there first, then post everywhere else.

[ThinkWithPortals]

58 minutes ago, jagdtigger said:

That is true, but no one will sue a small forum like his

You'd be surprised. People will sue anything if they think it'll make them a bit of cash.

[jagdtigger]

1 minute ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

You'd be surprised. People will sue anything if they think it'll make them a bit of cash.

Well i have an old forum that i keep online if for some reason i need it(i do not even know why i "made it") . The same question system is protecting it but so far i didnt got any notification from the hosting company that some troll want to sue me.

[TheSuspect]

13 hours ago, DisconnectedYT said:

CAN YOU PLEASE  CONTROLL THIS FOURM PROPERLY!

That isn't possible. Whatever we do, they're just keep coming back with plans that outdo ours. Best we can do is keep blocking them, though they'll keep coming back.

[Centurius]

1 hour ago, jagdtigger said:

That is true, but no one will sue a small forum like his . Even though there most be some way to do the same in english(in way that only a real person can answer it). But since its not my native language i do not know if its possible.

This isn't a particularly small forum and it is run by a company which has some of the most popular tech channels on Youtube. People will definitely sue.

[Tieox]

46 minutes ago, Litargirio said:

Thing is. Posts in Off-Topic don't add to the post count.

 

If they started counting, all of the sudden everyone would have +9999999 posts.

 

Even if they opened a new subforum for introductions, the spammers would just post there first, then post everywhere else.

 

Make a section for introductions, the new members can only post in that section, this contains them till they've made say two posts before entering the community.  

[ThinkWithPortals]

5 hours ago, Kierax said:

Make a section for introductions, the new members can only post in that section, this contains them till they've made say two posts before entering the community.  

The spammers would just spam two posts in the newbie section and then continue spamming all the other sections.

[colonel_mortis]

9 hours ago, ThinkWithPortals said:

The mods have said already that they aren't going to do anything to limit signups by language. That could open up LMG to all manner of discrimination lawsuits.

It wouldn't result in discrimination lawsuits (it's well within their rights to limit the site to a particular language), but that doesn't mean that it would be good for the community, and it's not something that we are planning to do.

9 hours ago, Secondmineboy said:

Well switcing from CloudFlare to Incapsula may help prevent bots and would also increase security plus its always on regarding the constant DDoS Attacks to this forum  

Incapsula will have no impact on that type of spam - it is posted by humans, and is in no way an attack that would trigger security alerts.

As for DDoS attacks, at the time of posting this, the forum has not been down in the past two months.

8 hours ago, Kierax said:

Make a section for introductions, the new members can only post in that section, this contains them till they've made say two posts before entering the community.  

Aside from that probably not completely fixing the issue (though I suspect that it might help), that would create a massive barrier to entry for legitimate members who are just there to ask one question, and not really trying to be a part of the community.

 

There are a few things that we are looking into to hopefully reduce the amount of spam that gets through, but please just report anything that does, and it will be dealt with in due course.

[nuttytechy]

As a senior moderator for a chat site for many years, I've seen this all over the net. It is an ongoing battle.

 

The site did have a spam filter which did stop spamming. From the 2nd line onwards the filter kicked in and the line would be rejected by the system. The only downside was if you changed a character then the line would be posted onto the site. 

 

To stop the spamming entirely would be near enough impossible as people would find ways to get around any filters, bans, ranking system, or what ever has been implemented.