Hello everybody

[Duke461]

Originally Posted by Akash Rastogi

They've become self-aware.

Darn you Skynet...

Originally Posted by Molten

At this point, is it spam or a conversation starter? Is it possible to be both? If it is both, is it really proper to delete the spam? Just alot of questions involved with this sort of situation. I'll be interested to see how this situation is dealt with.

Jason

And now they're questioning their own messages! :O

[Mark McLeod]

p.s.

Originally Posted by Duke461

Its definitely a bot. found the exact same wording and username:
http://greenstems.org/2011/07/hello-everybody/

Circular logic. Your link is actually this OP post, not a different spambot post. Kara earlier dismissed the post you found. Look at it more closely...

By the way, has anyone reported this yet?

It's now responsible for a respectable thread.

To the people who are saying report this, it's technically not doing anything bad. It posted one harmless, and somewhat nice post, and since then we've been talking for 2 whole pages over one comment. Unless it posts again (which I want it too), and that post is obviously spam, then we should let it be.

[Madison]

The site has measures in place to question/verify whether an account is spam or real. By ignoring this message, it undermines some of those measures and could lead to a flood of spam later.

The account has been banned. Y'all might enjoy spending your free time deleting spam, but I have other hobbies

[RoboDesigners]

Originally Posted by Madison

The account has been banned. Y'all might enjoy spending your free time deleting spam, but I have other hobbies

Doesn't a banned account's status/user title change to "banned?" If so, it doesn't look like the bot's account is really banned.

[Madison]

Originally Posted by RoboDesigners

Doesn't a banned account's status/user title change to "banned?" If so, it doesn't look like the bot's account is really banned.

The mechanism that moderators use to ban accounts is different from the default provided in vBulletin. Their title does not change.

[XaulZan11]

You know it's the offseason when a thread like this is one of the most popular ones on CD...

[Marc P.]

I've seen this sort of spam here before. It starts with an innocent enough post. A few weeks go by, the post falls off the most recent posts list, gets buried in the forum somewhere. Whoever/whatever created the account logs back in and puts their spam links/whatever in their signature. Changing a signature doesn't bump a post back up, so their spam ends up buried deep in a pile of posts where unsuspecting people will find it when looking through old posts for specific information. Spam like that is harder to find because not many people look through older posts, and would be less likely to report it/more likely to click the links, thinking they were safe if they've been there for that long.

[Molten]

Originally Posted by Madison

The account has been banned. Y'all might enjoy spending your free time deleting spam, but I have other hobbies

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg7Sj...el_video_title

It was a good bot, a kind bot. All it did was say hello, and it got banned from this forum. I can't say I have many memories of it, but it certainly made us think about bots in different ways. Thanks for that.

Bye nafziger,
Jason

[Duke461]

Originally Posted by Molten

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg7Sj...el_video_title

No.

[Duke461]

Originally Posted by Mark McLeod

p.s.

Circular logic. Your link is actually to this OP post, not a different spambot post. Kara referred to the post you found earlier. Look at it more closely...

It's now responsible for a respectable thread.

But the fact that "it" posted the exact same thing on multiple threads is good evidence for a strange person, or a bot.

P.S. i wonder what happens if you PM it......

Originally Posted by Duke461

P.S. i wonder what happens if you PM it......

Let's find out!

[Mark McLeod]

Originally Posted by Duke461

But the fact that "it" posted the exact same thing on multiple threads is good evidence for a strange person, or a bot.

Do you understand that the spambot did not make that post you linked to, therefore it cannot be used as evidence one way or another?

[Techhexium]

You're right Mark. This doesn't seem obvious at first, but when you click on the author's link in that website, you get this:

Posted in External Content, Robotics | Leave a comment | Retrieved from Chief Delphi. You might want to view the original article for more information, to leave a comment, or to contact the author.

Therefore, the username only posted in CD, the STEMroots website just archived it for some reason, it even provided a link to this topic.

[Duke461]

Originally Posted by Techhexium

You're right Mark. This doesn't seem obvious at first, but when you click on the author's link in that website, you get this:



Therefore, the username only posted in CD, the STEMroots website just archived it for some reason, it even provided a link to this topic.

ohhhhhh. my bad
obviously i did not read the website page well enough lol