Re: Spam solution?
 

Is the spam usually this heavy at this time of day, or is the problem getting worse? (see attached screenshot)

Re: Spam solution?
 

It comes in waves. Very heavy now. I suspect that when activity on CD increases, the spam bots specific to vbulletin can measure that and then target CD.

We spank them as fast as we can. There are several active mods.

Re: Spam solution?
 

Well its good that there are a lot of active mods then!

If this problem isnt fixed by build season this when the traffic goes up this will be one interesting place.

Re: Spam solution?
 

One of the other things to understand is that most mods don't have the ability to moderate every forum. So it is easy to delete the ones in the general or technical forums, but when they post in rarer forums like "rumor mill" we can't get them.

As I type this there is a spam post on the front page that I can't do anything about.

I think there is a technical solution to this problem, but I know that Brandon's time is at a premium. I would say that adding some mods or expanding the privilege of existing mods would help in the short term.

Re: Spam solution?
 

The spam also gets worse right before the start of big sporting events. Hence the uptick we've been seeing before that start of every window of NFL games.

Re: Spam solution?
 

Ahh that makes sense. Football's boring anyway.

Re: Spam solution?
 

My bad if I missed a reply to this but in late 2013 when i joined the team and created a CD account a moderator didn't have too as far as I can remember. Though when creating a new account there is a text box where you put a person's username; that person would be some one who recommended CD to you.(Not sure if it is needed to put one in the text box but it is easy to copy some one's username in a thread.)

As of a solution what if each person's first self made thread would have to go through the moderators before being posted. It would help if it were just spam, if it was an actual thread though the moderators would have to be quick in checking these posts in case they were important. Also can these spammers just make new threads? Or could they post in random threads? Otherwise the moderators might be getting a lot more emails if they can randomly post in these threads.

Plus I want to add if you do find a spam thread don't post in them. Just report. Otherwise the post will stay on for longer unless/until removed.

Re: Spam solution?
 

What if for new members trying to sign up, if you put in a referrer (with, say, 50 or more posts) and that referrer agreed to your signing up, in that you were legitimate, then you could be added to CD as an account, and if you didn't put in a referrer, then you would have to wait for a moderator to approve your signing up. For example if a user on "team 7" with a username a moderator couldn't identify tried to sign up, then the moderator would disallow the registration, or interrogate that user. If it was a person with an actual name, actual team, and other personal information, the moderator would simply approve the sign up.

The reason people post "Reported" in the thread is so that multiple people do not report them, preventing unnecessary email spam for the mods.

Re: Spam solution?
 

That is an awful lot of moderation to put on the mods. We all check in when we can or when we get notified. The current best solution is to just report it. CD is a great community. We want new users to be an active part of the community. A bit of spam can be tolerated.

Re: Spam solution?
 

I already this afternoon reported 3 non robotic related threads/post advertising the football game on Monday night football

Re: Spam solution?
 

So I am noticing a lot more of the spam posts as well. How do I report posts/new threads when I see them?

Re: Spam solution?
 

The little red/white triangle on the top of the post

Re: Spam solution?
 

Look at the top of any post, right side (in the orange bar separating posts). There are four icons. From left to right: Post # (AKA "view single post"), set of scales ("Reputation"), spotlight ("Spotlight" seen on the top of each page), and a warning triangle ("Report"). For reporting spam, click that "Report" icon and follow instructions given in the next window (often something about if there's any comments put them here).

Also for reporting, as noted, post with "Reported" either right before or right after you hit the report button--before is overall faster, as I recall.

Re: Spam solution?
 

Every piece I've seen starts in rumor mill. What if we did an experiment and closed rumor mill for a weekend and see if that fixes the issue? I'm not sure how much time it's take to class 1 forum for a weekend but it may work.