Inappropriate Topics

[MGebhart]

Just a heads up. I have gotten a couple Inappropriate replies to topics. It appears to be gibberish but includes links to pornographic websites. I have reported this to the Admin. Has anyone else had this happen?

I had to was my eyes out with soap.   

[Henry Blewer]

I have seen quite a few posts that are for questionable sites. They are usually cleared up quite fast. There are ways to block this, but it would close up the openness of the forum considerably.

[MGebhart]

I'm sure it would and I don't want that. For some reason I can't figure out the lack of intelligence and character in most folks.   

[Zairyn Arsyn]

were under attack! 
its been going on like this for a while, the spammers/bots have been registering on the forums every day pretty much for months
most of them seem to be inactive though.

[Oshyan]

We're working on the spam problem. We put some systems in place a couple months ago that seemed to help but it's back to unacceptable levels again so those measures must have been breached. It's a constant war unfortunately. There are some more options we'll try in the near future. Most of all, like you, we don't want to have to lock down the forums too much as it's the openness and vibrant discussion that results here that is so valuable.

- Oshyan

[FrankB]

I have recently added a simple but random math equation (like 18 - 4= ...) that new users have to solve when registering at NWDA Premier Store, as we got a couple dozen spam registrations daily. Since this is on, I don't have any spam registration anymore.
But I'm sure one day this is also not going to be a hurdle anymore.

[Oshyan]

Yes, exactly. We added a novel image rotation puzzle to registration a while back which helped for a bit, but was eventually cracked. I see the math puzzles around many places now and if they are not yet cracked, they will be. One problem is that in fact many of these spam registrations are *not* bots but instead extremely cheap labor, organized over the Internet, often from 3rd world countries or other places where cheap labor is plentiful (unfortunately services like "Mechanical Turk" feed this industry). Since they are real humans, they can usually solve these things. The only barrier that stands in their way is making it take so much time to solve the puzzles that it's not worth it for the pay they get. This of course also means it takes your real visitors more time, but as long as it's not so high that they leave, then it's a win I guess. It's a tough balancing act.

- Oshyan

[FrankB]

... or switch to managed registration approvals, meaning that you manually approve new registrations. Most of the time the fake registrants are easy to spot, once you look into the registration data. Anyway you are right in that this is an ongoing battle.

Frank

[Oshyan]

Yes, manual registrations are one option, but you then have to deal manually with sometimes 100s of registrations a day, or at least 10s of registrations per day. That's the kind of volume we *actually* see: http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?action=stats In August there are sometimes upwards of 100 registrations a day. If you look back in July, you'll see what happened when we initially implemented the captcha alternative, new registrations dropped to an average of less than 10 per day! That means most likely 90% of new registrations are spammers. Eek.

The other problem with manual approval is often times the spammers are smart enough to register without obvious spammy info in their profile, then change it later or post URLs to spam pages. Generally it's not too hard to figure out which is which, but it does take time and effort, all of which take away from more important things of course. *sigh*

- Oshyan

[Henry Blewer]

A parser may be an answer. Most of the spam I have seen here deals with certain products, phraseology, or off color topics. Known users could be taken off the check list. We like to have our little spats, like any family.

[Cyber-Angel]

Well the "Report to Moderator" feature is a good thing to have on here and I use it if I find some thing of a dubious nature, as I'm sure many here do! Ultimately I think that a few more moderators round here, perhaps willing members whom are here frequently, who could take of some of that load form the regular Planetside staff if the spam rate where to go up.

The thing is, that Matt, Jo and Oshyan can not be here on the forums at all times and so if an occurrence of spam or related business occurs then it can be a while before it is dealt with, having dedicated moderators could with that if it was felt the need for such a role.

There would of course need to be private (Non-Forum) communication between Planiside and these community moderators outlining responsibilities such as what constitutes a ban and the criteria for assessment for banning and escalation to bring it to the attention of Planetside staff.

This way you keep spam to a minimum and allow Planetside to create product with minimal distraction over such matters!

This is just an idea. 

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel
 



                     

[Oshyan]

Putting some volunteer moderators in place is not a bad idea. Something to think about.

- Oshyan

[Tangled-Universe]

Putting some volunteer moderators in place is not a bad idea. Something to think about.

- Oshyan

Indeed a good idea.
How many registrations are made each day, ~20?
Also for other things moderators could be of help, like removing spam-topics if they still manage to seep through.
Stuff like that.

I'd volunteer, of course

[Oshyan]

We have between 50 and 100 registrations a day right now. I estimate maybe 10% are not spam.

- Oshyan

[TheBadger]

You guys must be on top of it though, because I have only run into that kind of crap once or twice, so far.

Also, planetside is only three people? Really? Thats rather impressive.