Spammers

[WLH]

How about making a condition where you need a certain number of posts before you can start a thread in the buy and sell section, but then I guess spammers would just open one in the other sections?

Correct and any modification to the forum code to do anything special present problems when the forum software is upgraded. The problem we are currently having is with human spammers and reporting the post makes it stand out to the mods. Then when a mod logs on we see it right away and we can deal with it quickly and remove the spammer and any post made by them.

[sp3ctre]

Thanks for the support and for the ideas guys.

One issue with black lists is they are notoriously unreliable and can generate false positives. The last thing we want to do is stop legitimate users logging on.

I know it is a pain in the a**se to see spam on the forum but please believe I am working behind the scenes to stop them posting this crap. Unfortunately we are constantly under attack from hackers of one sort or another (won't go into too much detail here) so my priority is fending them off first, then tackling spam.

Hopefully I should have a good system to fight the spammers in place in a week or so, but in the mean time please keep reporting the posts and not replying to them.

Thanks again!

[PawnSacrifice]

Have just tried to report a spammer - already been done. I can see this becoming competitive

[pvr]

I won that one Pawn, you are obviously too concentrated in that conf call of yours

[PawnSacrifice]

I won that one Pawn, you are obviously too concentrated in that conf call of yours

Ha... well, not quite, more checking a few times to make sure I'd read the post correctly, and wasn't reporting something legit!

[Wondermike]

Hmmm that guy doesn't give up, must have banned the same muppet at least into double figures now.

[exdos]

Thanks for that! Exactly what I've been looking for.

[bcworkz]

Most users here are interested in cars, not computers, so they have no idea to the extent that sites like this are CONSTANTLY under attack. We are fortunate to have some very active mods and admins, so spam is often nipped before most members even see it and get a chance to report it.

Great job guys!

I have a question for admin, out of curiosity: Why do user links not contain the rel="nofollow" attribute? Of course, it does nothing to stop spam, but it largely prevents black hat spamdexers from getting the results they want in gaming search engine ranking.

Spammers are scum of the worst sort. The amount of time spent each day worldwide cleaning out their filth is truly astounding.

[RidgyDidge]

Great work mods. The quality of the forum is what keeps me coming back.


Sent from my iPad

[sp3ctre]

Thanks for the positive feedback guys. It is indeed down to the efforts of our fantastic mods that the level of spam on this forum remains quite low (compared to other forums). It is also down to you guys hitting the "report post" button rather than commenting on the spam... you can't believe how much easier it is to see a few threads with the "reported" icon on it, rather than have to rummage through a load of threads looking for them.

I have a question for admin, out of curiosity: Why do user links not contain the rel="nofollow" attribute? Of course, it does nothing to stop spam, but it largely prevents black hat spamdexers from getting the results they want in gaming search engine ranking.

I did experiment with this a while back but it was a bit of a "dirty hack" to get it to work. In my experience it doesn't really affect the level of spam either... they tend to throw a lot of mud at the wall hoping some of it will stick, rather than seek out those without NOFOLLOW links.

I am doing work behind the scenes to try and keep the level of spam as low as possible, and in the mean time the mods are doing a great job of keeping the visible amount of spam at a manageable level

[Adamski]

This is a great forum.

Admin & Mods - keep up the great work