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hkparker
National Hazard
Posts: 601
Registered: 15-10-2010
Location: California, United States
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Tired of reporting spam
I'm sure everyone has noticed lots of spam recently. I guess it's not the biggest deal but I was wondering if it would be a good idea to make people
do a captcha for their first post, or first 5 posts. These spam bots look like bots, not people, so that should take care of it. If it didn't we
could could have mods approve a new members first post. If mods don't want to have to go through all that I'm sure other members would volunteer
their time. Thoughts?
My YouTube Channel
"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature." -Michael Faraday
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m1tanker78
National Hazard
Posts: 685
Registered: 5-1-2011
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These things have been brought up before. It's weird that people actually view, and sometimes even respond, when it's clearly spam. I think that some
of the bots are human-guided.
I reported a thread once and was surprised that a U2U was sent to ALL the moderators. It seems redundant to do it that way.
I believe a new member's first 2 or 3 posts should be screened -OR- grant a few established, frequent members a quasi-moderator status so that
suspicious posts can be put on hold (not deleted or edited) and let the real moderator have the last word. This would greatly cut down on multiple
members reporting the same spam thread IMO. A thread that is 'on hold' (or temporarily locked) can't be opened by anyone except the mods. That way,
the newbies or the unsuspecting members don't get suckered into clicking on links and so forth.
Though, all this may be easier said than done.
Tank
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Polverone
Now celebrating 21 years of madness
Posts: 3186
Registered: 19-5-2002
Location: The Sunny Pacific Northwest
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Mood: Waiting for spring
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People already have to decode a captcha from the forum to sign up. People also need to be able to receive email at a real address. Many of the
spammers use gmail addresses, and gmail has its own captcha system required for signup. I don't know what the division of labor is between bots and
humans, but there appears to be no shortage of humans to process captchas when necessary.
The one silver lining is that this site is busy enough that spammers are noticed quickly. On some low-activity forums spammers create a death spiral,
where spam isn't eliminated fast enough and then the real users grow disinterested because all recent posts seem to be spam.
PGP Key and corresponding e-mail address
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hkparker
National Hazard
Posts: 601
Registered: 15-10-2010
Location: California, United States
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thats true. I always report spam, is this to be encouraged or should I stop because enough people already report?
My YouTube Channel
"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature." -Michael Faraday
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m1tanker78
National Hazard
Posts: 685
Registered: 5-1-2011
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Good question. I do the opposite, neglecting to hit the report button thinking others have already reported the spam.
Come to think of it, I rarely ever open a thread with a spammy title by a new member. I guess it's no surprise that a good majority of the spam posts
are jewelry-related. I'll bet the crawler(?) sees a lot of words like "platinum", "gold", etc. on here and deems this a good place to drop jewelry
spam.
One other thing that probably helps to propagate spam on here is the fact that Science Madness has a good presence on Goooogle.  All in all, it's under control IMO (except for some sporadic outbreaks). That's
likely where a human intervenes to defeat the captha.
Parker, since you're in Cali, have you ever driven down to TJ??
Tank
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hkparker
National Hazard
Posts: 601
Registered: 15-10-2010
Location: California, United States
Member Is Offline
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TJ? Take that as a no, what is it?
My YouTube Channel
"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature." -Michael Faraday
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Bot0nist
International Hazard
Posts: 1559
Registered: 15-2-2011
Location: Right behind you.
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Mood: Streching my cotyledons.
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Tijuana maybe? I hear they got donkey shows...
U.T.F.S.E. and learn the joys of autodidacticism!
Don't judge each day only by the harvest you reap, but also by the seeds you sow.
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Wizzard
Hazard to Others
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Registered: 22-3-2010
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I think quasi-moderators and adding a 24-hour delay to thread creation (Best example: Plaster all over the user creation, if they create a thread
within 24 hours of their profile's creation, it and their profile will be deleted). Should be easy to enforce with some deadlines.
Also, some simple yes/no questions with the answers written in plain language nearby:
Do not check this box, check the next one []
Ignore this text, check the box []
Check this box if you followed directions []
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Bot0nist
International Hazard
Posts: 1559
Registered: 15-2-2011
Location: Right behind you.
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Mood: Streching my cotyledons.
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I like what barley81 did in the last spam thread. After reporting it, he posted "Spam thread reported" in the thread. This way everyone who always
reports every spam they see (like me) will know its handled, and it will keep us from flooding the moderators with report U2Us. So, If you see a spam
thread and it doesn't have a "reported spam" post in it, report it and post that you did. I think this will help.
U.T.F.S.E. and learn the joys of autodidacticism!
Don't judge each day only by the harvest you reap, but also by the seeds you sow.
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hkparker
National Hazard
Posts: 601
Registered: 15-10-2010
Location: California, United States
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That sounds perfect, ill do that.
My YouTube Channel
"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature." -Michael Faraday
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White Yeti
National Hazard
Posts: 816
Registered: 20-7-2011
Location: Asperger's spectrum
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I actually like reporting spam. Is that weird?
I did notice that there's more spam recently, it's strange that people would chose to spam this website, the conglomeration the the best and brightest
minds on the web.
I agree that it's critical to post "spam reported" after reporting, so that the administrators don't get a flood of U2Us about the same spammer.
This is just an idea, but is it possible to set up a limit to how many hyperlinks you can put in one post? Granted, some users use many hyperlinks to
direct people to pertinent and useful content and documents. But I think that if one post has more than ~15 hyperlinks, it should automatically be
sent to the administrators so they can decide for themselves.
I personally never used more than 5 hyperlinks, this might be a nice way to automatise the elimination of spammers. Spam is mostly automatic, so why
not eliminate it in a semi-automatic fashion as well?
"Ja, Kalzium, das ist alles!" -Otto Loewi
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Wizzard
Hazard to Others
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Registered: 22-3-2010
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I think no sig/hyperlinks in the first 10 posts would be nice, but all that will yield is SPAM posts without content!
Why not an elementary science question for an additional captcha? Maybe, what element has atomic number 1? Or, "Do as you oughtta, add acid to ____"
or something promoting common sense / safety  "A good chemist always wears his
____ goggles and gloves" or something.
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White Yeti
National Hazard
Posts: 816
Registered: 20-7-2011
Location: Asperger's spectrum
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Maybe I wasn't clear. What I meant is to set up a threshold over which any post with a number of hyperlinks greater than or equal to that amount would
be sent to admin for inspection.
"Ja, Kalzium, das ist alles!" -Otto Loewi
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Sedit
International Hazard
Posts: 1939
Registered: 23-11-2008
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Mood: Manic Expressive
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Is there no way we can track them? These spammers are coming from forums somewhere. Can we not find anyway to figure out where they are coming from?
Knowledge is useless to useless people...
"I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes. The fall of Rome, the fall of Germany — the
fall of the ruling country, the people who think they can do whatever they want without anybody else's consent. I've seen this story
before."~Maynard James Keenan
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hkparker
National Hazard
Posts: 601
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Location: California, United States
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First thing I would think is IP. But they could proxy up or use TOR, and it would be a huge pain, futile, and kinda wrong to block known proxies and
TOR nodes. They might be coming from the same IP anyway. So unless we see a trend in IPs then probably not by IP.
I like the idea of first post needs to be approved by a mod. If the mods don't want that responsibility maybe they could be approved by anyone?
Everyone's first post goes in a private section and all it takes is a user confirming it isn't spam for it to go public. This system would allow for
the possibility of abuse though. Also I think the current spam situation isn't detrimental to the forum.
My YouTube Channel
"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature." -Michael Faraday
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Bot0nist
International Hazard
Posts: 1559
Registered: 15-2-2011
Location: Right behind you.
Member Is Offline
Mood: Streching my cotyledons.
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I agree, I think the "spam reported" posts are working. It is annoying when a bot comes on and bumps 20+ old threads to today's post's with spam, but
most of the time it's just a post or two and the mods are really good about getting it right in a timely manner. Also, I hope the "spam reported"posts
help from keeping us from flooding the mod and admins boxes.
U.T.F.S.E. and learn the joys of autodidacticism!
Don't judge each day only by the harvest you reap, but also by the seeds you sow.
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AndersHoveland
Hazard to Other Members, due to repeated speculation and posting of untested highly dangerous procedures!
Posts: 1986
Registered: 2-3-2011
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Quote: Originally posted by Sedit  | | Is there no way we can track them? These spammers are coming from forums somewhere. Can we not find anyway to figure out where they are coming from?
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I am fairly certain most of them are based in China or India. Sometimes I wonder whether the 1 billion people in China now having access to the
internet (many of whom are learning english) is a good thing.
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hissingnoise
International Hazard
Posts: 3940
Registered: 26-12-2002
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China's population now is around 1,400,000,000.
Sleeping giant, indeed!
[edit] Waking giant, I shudda' said!
[Edited on 28-12-2011 by hissingnoise]
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hkparker
National Hazard
Posts: 601
Registered: 15-10-2010
Location: California, United States
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| Quote: Originally posted by AndersHoveland |
I am fairly certain most of them are based in China or India. Sometimes I wonder whether the 1 billion people in China now having access to the
internet (many of whom are learning english) is a good thing. |
Internets is for everyone, not just those who speak English, the only problem I see with their internet setup is the censorship.
My YouTube Channel
"Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature." -Michael Faraday
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AndersHoveland
Hazard to Other Members, due to repeated speculation and posting of untested highly dangerous procedures!
Posts: 1986
Registered: 2-3-2011
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Perhaps I have a solution that will cleanse this forum forever of pointless spam...
Someone just contact the chinese government and relate to them that you have reason to believe this forum may be providing information on how to make
explosives to chinese dissidents. They will not hesitate to block this forum from all users in China.  Hopefully there are not any good chinese members that frequent here. 
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Nicodem
Super Moderator
Posts: 4230
Registered: 28-12-2004
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If everyone that uses the report function would also leave the "spam reported" notification, then everything would be just fine. It does not take much
to clean up the spam, but unnecessarily going trough a dozen reports is somewhat annoying. Thankfully there are members who promptly report spam. It
helps a lot, but it would be even better that there would only be members who report and notify others about the report. So this is what
members can work on in order to improve the spam removal system.
| Quote: Originally posted by AndersHoveland | Perhaps I have a solution that will cleanse this forum forever of pointless spam...
Someone just contact the chinese government and relate to them that you have reason to believe this forum may be providing information on how to make
explosives to chinese dissidents. They will not hesitate to block this forum from all users in China. Hopefully there are not any good chinese members that frequent here. |
How about contacting a Swedish embassy and telling them that there is a certain delusional neonazi that gathers such information on this forum?
Wouldn't that make much more sense? At least it would not cause any injustice to anyone and might actually help the authorities to finally arrest the
right person.
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Bot0nist
International Hazard
Posts: 1559
Registered: 15-2-2011
Location: Right behind you.
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Mood: Streching my cotyledons.
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Hehe, you mean Nicodem. But caustically hilarious.
[Edited on 28-12-2011 by Bot0nist]
U.T.F.S.E. and learn the joys of autodidacticism!
Don't judge each day only by the harvest you reap, but also by the seeds you sow.
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gutter_ca
Hazard to Others
Posts: 173
Registered: 7-6-2010
Location: California
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Mood: Bored at work!
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| Quote: Originally posted by Nicodem |
How about contacting a Swedish embassy and telling them that there is a certain delusional neonazi that gathers such information on this forum?
Wouldn't that make much more sense? At least it would not cause any injustice to anyone and might actually help the authorities to finally arrest the
right person. |
gutter_ca likes this.
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Pulverulescent
National Hazard
Posts: 793
Registered: 31-1-2008
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Mood: Torn between two monikers ─ "hissingnoise" and the present incarnation!
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Jeeez! Something really needs to be done to stop this shite pouring into the forum!
I mean, it's got waaay beyond a joke!!!
P
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dann2
International Hazard
Posts: 1523
Registered: 31-1-2007
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Funny, I rarely see spam?
(apart for Pulverulencent's posts!!*)
Dann2
* only joking
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