Hello everybody

[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.

[XaulZan11]

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

[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.

[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.

[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

[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.

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by DonRotolo

All of them

It may be a human masquerading as a bot. Perhaps the purpose is to find easily-posted-to fora, as targets for some future spam?

I would believe that theory, if there wasn't a giant space before the "!" at the end (and the period in the post that Mark found). I'm sure that the kind of "bot" you described exists.

I remember a bit of spam a few years ago that was actually related to building robots. I can't remember the topic, but I do remember that it was very convincing, because I didn't do a Google search and responded to it...

[PAR_WIG1350]

Originally Posted by PayneTrain

This thread is quickly turning into how programmers are tearing our world apart, destroying internet havens close to us.

(something to remember during build season for the typical hardware/software skirmish that develops)

Not all programmers, only the programmers who have no sense of decency.

[plnyyanks]

Originally Posted by PAR_WIG1350

Not all programmers, only the programmers who have no sense of decency.

and keep in mind that some programmers do have (at least a little) sense of decency and are not trying to destroy the world in some way

[Karibou]

Originally Posted by plnyyanks

and keep in mind that some programmers do have (at least a little) sense of decency and are not trying to destroy the world in some way

One of our programmers managed to fry 4 victors and set a (old) bot on fire twice. When they aren't dealing directly with a computer screen of code, some of them can be pretty malicious...