Crazy idea to fight spam
 

What about that but for every forum?

Edit: I mean members with a certain post count (+100?) review other users first posts.

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

It would have to approved by a mod.

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

This is a great idea. Pretty much every newer user (50+ posts as you said) can tell if it is spam or not. Plus it will allow me and many others like me who are on all the time to do a "mod-like" task when no mods are on.

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

Currently a lot of the spam seems to link to genglobal.org

As a temporary fix, could a ban on genglobal.org links be implemented? I don't think anyone legitimately needs to link there.

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

Most of these links do lead to genglobal.org, but not all. Obviously as you stated, it would be a temporary fix, due to the fact that it would only filter those links.

It is possible. I don't know if CD has it, but vBulletin has a plugin that blocks links stemming from one link.

I like this idea, and until a long term fix can be found, this would work.

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

Oh noes! You actually clicked on the links!?

Seriously though, I like this proposal.

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

As a more general / effective temporary fix, CD could have a whitelist for websites that actually will generate links. Eg, FIRST website, TBA, Github, etc would be allowed as links, while other links would simply display URLs without actually being a link.

Example:
link to github (whitelisted, displayed as link)
ht​tp://g​englobal.o​rg/some-spam (not whitelisted, displayed as plain url)

On other forums this type of system is effective at preventing spam from new users (in fairness, other forums have other measures as well), since spammers know people aren't going to copy and paste their spam. I'm not sure how effective it'll be on our resident spammer here, but I think it's worth a try.

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

Has anyone suggested a captcha on account creation?

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

Pretty sure there is one... and they'd get around it anyway.

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

To take the strain off the mods from patrolling every single post, why not restrict a thread (unviewable) if the OP receives a certain amount of negative rep from it. The thread can then be removed when a moderator sees it is in the restricted section.

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

There is a captcha on account creation. It is worth noting that it is not a modern captcha service like Google's ReCaptcha, and probably easier to circumvent.

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

But, but... what about our favorite "controversial" threads? This would kill those, too!


Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, but it would contribute to the perception of non-transparent moderating that seems to have developed.

The other factor is that you'd have to deal with "rep clicks" vs. "rep score". One rep click from someone with a lot of rep points can dish out an awful lot of rep score in a hurry--one reason I'm generally cautious with rep--but the same score can also be picked up from a lot of people with not as many rep points all firing off one rep click apiece.

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

This is a good idea. Maybe posters with less than 10 posts can't use links? Not sure what the limitations of vBulletin are but I know 2338 was able to do things like that with our phBB forum.

http://i.imgur.com/2wAz8I4.png

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

Then instead of using rep, use reports. When a certain number of people report the post as spam, it should be hidden until a mod can take action

Re: Crazy idea to fight spam
 

As long as "certain number" = 1-2 (and was limited to thread OPs), I think you'd be OK. More than that and I'd expect a moderator revolt.

Bear in mind that every time someone reports a post, the mods for that area get a message. Don't want to be clogging up inboxes now.