Spam

[Brandon Martus]

I've updated some registration settings restricting a little more of what new users can do, updated to reCAPTCHA 2.0, and expanded the moderator coverage (including adding a few more moderators to take care of any spam quicker). Hopefully this will help prevent some of the increased spam that has been happening recently.

[Sperkowsky]

You rock Brandon. Thanks a ton. But.... Now how will I get free streams of all the Football games?

[niklas674]

You rock Brandon. Thanks a ton. But.... Now how will I get free streams of all the Football games?

Or read a review for quantum code?

[Bkeeneykid]

Or read a review for quantum code?

Or how to buy new cheap iPhones?

[ctt956]

Or how to buy new cheap iPhones?

And 300 GB iPads and quad-core 13" MacBook Pros?

But seriously, where will I find entertainingly bad grammar? What about a quick way to spread reputation around? :p

Thank you for the updates! Hopefully it works! :D

[Lili_1868]

Thank you! :)

[euhlmann]

Looks like it didn't quite work...

[ollien]

Looks like it didn't quite work...

Huh? I haven't seen any spam over the past couple days, but then again, I've been swamped. Did I miss something?

[frcguy]

Huh? I haven't seen any spam over the past couple days, but then again, I've been swamped. Did I miss something?

2 spam posts. I reported both and they were promptly removed.

[Brandon Martus]

Looks like it didn't quite work...

My time machine is in the shop. So, any spam accounts registered before last night are still a threat.

[bkahl]

Looks like it didn't quite work...

The big new addition is the addition of moderators. Hopefully these new moderators will stay active on CD and will assume their responsibilities well by combating spam. I know some of the additions personally and trust they can do the job.

Remember, each time a thread is reported for spam, every moderator for that forum will receive an email. It will be handled as quickly as possible. It's a bit much to ask of these people to delete a thread as soon as they receive the email.

It's also not really realistic to ask for spam to just go away. The current forum software is outdated, but it also likely would not be worth the undertaking to upgrade. CD has too many custom features and such a simple UI that everyone is used to for it to be worth the upgrade.

[Foster]

My time machine is in the shop. So, any spam accounts registered before last night are still a threat.

Yes, I hate that when mine breaks down, but the guy at my shop, I think his name is Emmett, is pretty good.

When the SPAM is removed, is the account also flagged / deleted?

[Chris is me]

Yes, I hate that when mine breaks down, but the guy at my shop, I think his name is Emmett, is pretty good.

When the SPAM is removed, is the account also flagged / deleted?

Yup, spam accounts are disabled by the moderator at the same time the threads are deleted (unless the moderator forgets to do this). So each new spam thread is a new account usually.

[WinterPoet]

And 300 GB iPads and quad-core 13" MacBook Pros?

But seriously, where will I find entertainingly bad grammar? What about a quick way to spread reputation around? :p

What am I going to do if I don't have to puzzle over nonsensical titles? I think I'll live without some of the other stuff, but I'm gonna miss "man walks two dog" or whatever they were.

Thanks for the work though!

[ollien]

What am I going to do if I don't have to puzzle over nonsensical titles? I think I'll live without some of the other stuff, but I'm gonna miss "man walks two dog" or whatever they were.

Thanks for the work though!

Honestly, if I saw this video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOxTa3aGTFs), I wouldn't be too opposed to leaving it up.

[JustinCAD]

Yup, spam accounts are disabled by the moderator at the same time the threads are deleted (unless the moderator forgets to do this). So each new spam thread is a new account usually.

I know it isn't a big deal, but could this be clarified? Does disabling mean removing the account from CD or removing access to the account?

The reason I ask this is because in the past when I've reported accounts, I've sometimes given a negative reputation to the user. Checking at my user cp, it lists the reputation given, and these accounts are still there. I can still view their account when I click on their name.

[EmileH]

But seriously, where will I find entertainingly bad grammar?

Reddit.

[Brandon Martus]

I know it isn't a big deal, but could this be clarified? Does disabling mean removing the account from CD or removing access to the account?

The reason I ask this is because in the past when I've reported accounts, I've sometimes given a negative reputation to the user. Checking at my user cp, it lists the reputation given, and these accounts are still there. I can still view their account when I click on their name.
The accounts are there, but they cannot post or edit their profile.

[Gravity]

Hopefully this makes a difference, I've seen an influx of spam posts/accounts recently. It really dispirits me to see how people create these accounts just to make a disturbance in the CD community.

There are probably better uses for their time... :p

But seriously, where will I find entertainingly bad grammar?
Any YouTube video ever?

[Joe Ross]

My time machine is in the shop. So, any spam accounts registered before last night are still a threat.

There's still been a number of questionable accounts registered today.

[logank013]

Out of curiosity, who are the new mods.

I feel like there is a list somewhere of all the mods but I always have trouble finding it.

[EricH]

Out of curiosity, who are the new mods.

I feel like there is a list somewhere of all the mods but I always have trouble finding it.
https://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/showgroups.php

I think I know who 2-4 of the newer ones are, including at least two that are within the last couple days.

[Foster]

Thanks for the update on how it works.

Have to say, they seem to be trying "Re: Concentrations of Solutions Molarity" is close to a science thing you would find here. ;)

Good luck new moderators, we salute you for your valiant efforts!

[chapman1]

Thanks for the monumental effort that maintains this valuable site for the benefit of the FRC community.

[logank013]

Is there anyway to make the report feature more "intelligent"? For instance, can you add a question that says "Is this spam?" Then add two buttons for "yes" and "no". If "yes" is clicked, it is immediately removed from the site and sent to a "trash folder" and then sent to a mod to double check the report? Then the mod could empty the "trash folder" after double checking the reports.

[frcguy]

Is there anyway to make the report feature more "intelligent"? For instance, can you add a question that says "Is this spam?" Then add two buttons for "yes" and "no". If "yes" is clicked, it is immediately removed from the site and sent to a "trash folder" and then sent to a mod to double check the report? Then the mod could empty the "trash folder" after double checking the reports.

How do you protect such a function from abuse?

[logank013]

How do you protect such a function from abuse?

I thought about that too. That's part of why I thought of having a mod double checking the spam report. If it's spam, the mod removes it from the "trash folder" permanently. If it isn't spam and there are no problems, the mod reinstates it to it's original spot of posting.

With that said, I think the CD community for the most part won't report a post as spam when they are mad at someone to get their post removed. To make it harder for fake accounts to be created and to report someone they are mad at, this function could be only used by accounts with 50 posts or more.

Any accounts abusing this function can be suspended for a certain amount of time or removed entirely.

I think that if this is plausible as far as coding and building into the website, it would be a great way to remove spam. It wouldn't prevent spam but it would remove the spam from the visible website for the time being.

P.S. If the trash folder isn't plausible for coding, maybe have the post show up as deleted like when someone deletes their post. Instead of saying "deleted" it would say "spam".

I'm not a website builder but I'm trying to think of this from a "logical" perspective like I would when solving a Computer Science problem in Java.

[Chris is me]

I thought about that too. That's part of why I thought of having a mod double checking the spam report. If it's spam, the mod removes it from the "trash folder" permanently. If it isn't spam and there are no problems, the mod reinstates it to it's original spot of posting.

With that said, I think the CD community for the most part won't report a post as spam when they are mad at someone to get their post removed. To make it harder for fake accounts to be created and to report someone they are mad at, this function could be only used by accounts with 50 posts or more.

It doesn't need to just be something most people won't abuse. It either needs to be not abuse-able at all, sufficiently hard enough to abuse that most people won't bother, or use of the feature needs to be restricted. It just takes one bad actor every once in awhile to temporarily hide a legitimate thread or two, and then it will take even more moderator work to restore it. Even if the majority of us would never do that, it would happen. Imgur had a similar feature, where if X people reported a post it would be automatically removed temporarily, and as soon as it was discovered it was heavily abused until it was disabled / tweaked.

I'm not a website builder but I'm trying to think of this from a "logical" perspective like I would when solving a Computer Science problem in Java.

These kind of perspectives get a lot harder when you add human behavior and psychology into the mix. It is an important lesson to learn early into a programming career, to constantly consider human-machine interactions and the unintended consequences of seemingly simple solutions. It's a lesson more engineers and software people need to learn, frankly.

[frcguy]

snip

snip

Good points from both of you guys. From all the posts I've seen, we're all kind of rallying around the idea of users that exceed a certain metric (whether it be post count, rep, etc.) having extended privileges to remove or hide spam. So, is this something that can be implemented somewhat easily and if so how do we go about it? Are there any more thoughts about this idea?

[ctt956]

Or how to buy new cheap iPhones?

Go check the homepage...:p

EDIT: It has been removed.

[maxnz]

I thought about that too. That's part of why I thought of having a mod double checking the spam report. If it's spam, the mod removes it from the "trash folder" permanently. If it isn't spam and there are no problems, the mod reinstates it to it's original spot of posting.

With that said, I think the CD community for the most part won't report a post as spam when they are mad at someone to get their post removed. To make it harder for fake accounts to be created and to report someone they are mad at, this function could be only used by accounts with 50 posts or more.

Any accounts abusing this function can be suspended for a certain amount of time or removed entirely.

I think that if this is plausible as far as coding and building into the website, it would be a great way to remove spam. It wouldn't prevent spam but it would remove the spam from the visible website for the time being.

P.S. If the trash folder isn't plausible for coding, maybe have the post show up as deleted like when someone deletes their post. Instead of saying "deleted" it would say "spam".

I'm not a website builder but I'm trying to think of this from a "logical" perspective like I would when solving a Computer Science problem in Java.

What if the cutoff is at 1000, 5000 or even 10000 posts? Then you only have the extremely long term FIRST people and (hopefully) they are much more trustworthy. And it becomes hard enough to meet that requirement that it isn't worth doing intentionally.

And, we could use logan's idea of having it show up as 'spam' like it shows a post that was 'deleted'. But, you are able to click another button to 'show' the message, similar to how Twitch chat posts filtered by moderators work. Then we somewhat remove the problem of someone abusing their privilege and silencing someone who is legitimate.